Ascension
by thebluninja
Summary: Heavily AU. Thanks to a cold, humanity never discovers the Prothean ruins on Mars, and barely develops Mass Effect technology. They step out onto the galactic stage after the Reapers have harvested every other species, and find the crumbs left behind by the turians, asari, and salarians. Now they must adapt to fight a foe who won't be seen for far longer than human history.
1. Prologue 1

_For want of a nail the shoe was lost.__  
__For want of a shoe the horse was lost.__  
__For want of a horse the rider was lost.__  
__For want of a rider the message was lost.__  
__For want of a message the battle was lost.__  
__For want of a battle the kingdom was lost.__  
__And all for the want of a horseshoe nail._

_Of course, if the horse hadn't been there in the first place, they would have had a contingency plan, and maybe that would have worked. Having the nail without the horse, though?_

_June 17, 2148, Mars_

* * *

"Achoo!" Steve Roberts rubbed at his nose, having caught the sneeze in the crook of his elbow.

"By Allah, stop sneezing in my direction," Mohammed Marid muttered, skimming the news on a datapad. Their portable dome shelter was crowded, so he was doing so while perched atop the pile of crates they wanted kept as protected from the thin, dusty, Martian winds as possible. "We have four sectors to scan today if we want to catch up."

"I know, I know," he sniffled, pulling open the fridge long enough to pull out two canteens worth of orange juice concentrate, dumping one into his own drink and offering the other one to his partner. "I wasn't expecting to catch a cold when I hit Utopia Planitia for supplies." The small settlement near the equator had been named by an overly enthusiastic technician, but so far, the various Earth governments collaborating on the Mars settlement plan had not seen fit to start building spaceships there.

"I know that, but it's put us behind," Mohammed said, dumping the juice into his own canteen. "We've got to get caught up or they're going to start docking our pay. I think we should split up and take different sections." He turned off the datapad, hopping down off the crate, and his foot landed on something small, round, and in just the right place to make him stumble as Steve sneezed again. "Augh! Right in the face!" He scrubbed hurriedly at the spray of snot and saliva with his shirtsleeve.

"God, sorry, sorry," Steve said, in between another several sneezes. And so, when they headed out, the additional contagion was enough to get Mohammed started on his own sneezes. Such that when the scanner on his ATV blipped to the presence of the so-called 'element zero' on the edge of the Promethei Planum, it went entirely unnoticed. Human colonization of Mars continued, with the Prothean ruins, and their caches of advanced technology, left completely unnoticed.

* * *

_December 5, 2187, Citadel_

The Widow relay activated, and the collected turian and asari ships formed up. The batarian fleet cruised in, as their intelligence had led them to expect. What they hadn't known was that it was backed with an equal number of geth ships, led by a massive, two-kilometer long ship that no one had ever seen before.

"What the hell is that?" Solana Vakarian, gunnery officer aboard the turian dreadnought _Complovian_, asked her captain.

"I have absolutely no idea. Target it and open fire," he ordered, and she did so with alacrity. Her mother was dead now, courtesy of an eezo-packed asteroid that had struck Palaven not two months before, as the batarians went from being merely galatic thugs to starting an all-out war. Thessia and Sur'Kesh had suffered their own tragedies, as well. Now her brother and father were on the station behind her, the arms closed tight, both of them prepared to repel batarian slavers who managed to bypass the fleet and strike at the heart of galactic civilization.

Their shots blurred across the intervening space at ten percent of the speed of light, and then … just stopped. The shields on the strange vessel had stood up to the most powerful weapon on their ship, though no doubt it had left quite an impact to the shield strength. The other four dreadnoughts present had also fired on it, while the _Destiny Ascension_ had split her fire at the two batarian dreadnoughts. "Fire again! For the Imperator, spirits protect him!"

Their second volley went wide, as the geth shots impacted them, shifting their ship just enough to deflect their aim, ripping apart a batarian destroyer off to one side. Then the massive, squid-like ship opened fire itself, a massive red-hot thread of metal. Solana would probably have admired the weapon, and its effects, if the weapon hadn't pierced their shields and their ship right through the bridge, destroying the entire command staff, along with three hundred other turian crewmen, on its path to damage the main gun.

The rest of the battle went along similar lines. The asari and turian forces were already outmassed by almost fifty percent, but the mystery ship was the deal-breaker. Two shots from it were enough to leave the _Destiny Ascension_ floating dead in space, and the batarian and geth fleets swooped in, diving past the beleaguered defenders.

To the surprise of the defenders, they did not even attempt to enter the wards, every single one swooping down, launching shuttles and ground vehicles straight into the Presidium. Elite units of batarian commandos, flanked by geth primes, went straight up the Council tower, through the harshest defenses that C-Sec had to offer. Both of the other Vakarians died here, selling their lives dearly, killing a hundred batarians before simply being overwhelmed by the number of troops available.

Then the arms of the Citadel opened, the mysterious ship swooping in and latching onto the tower. Trillions of lines of complex code were uploaded, manually entering the signal the Keepers would no longer respond to, and the last of the defending fleet were privileged to see a sight no one since the Prothean Emperor had witnessed.

The Reapers had returned from dark space, and they were here to start their harvest.

* * *

_March 28, 2240_

The Reapers surrounded the Citadel, a million strong. They had harvested the species of the galaxy, every species brought out into space. Batarians, turians, asari, salarian, all of these had been turned into new two-kilometer long Reapers, taking the names of the species they harvested. The other species, the hanar, elcor, vorcha, volus, quarians, had been converted into the smaller destroyers, as had the leftovers of the primary species. They had scanned the up-and-coming species, examining the yahg, the irkik, two others the Council races had never encountered, and laid their preparations.

Harbinger, the first among them, lay at the center of the fleet. Anticipation, or its equivalent, was present through all the Reapers, as they awaited his choice. Nazara was praised now, the million-year-old being having proven more than capable of the difficult task, made more difficult by the handful of Protheans who had somehow evaded their harvest.

At last, one name was broadcast throughout the Reaper fleet. "Watrios," Harbinger declared. The Reaper in question was older than Nazara, nearly five million years old, and had been responsible for the downfall of the last asari holdouts, carefully indoctrinating several agents very carefully to lower their defenses and let in the husk-forms. "The Keepers have still not been fixed, so you must watch closely, developing agents needed to open the way when the time comes, or else alert me to use the backup relay."

"I understand and obey," the Reaper responded. Cruising casually away from the gathered mass of its fellows, it used the Widow relay to vanish deeper into the galaxy. There were multiple relays accessible only to the Reapers or their servants, and from one of those, he would wait. The Prothean-remnants could prove useful again, and it had several Keepers to examine and determine how the Protheans had stopped them from beyond their grave.

* * *

_May 15, 2243, Ascension Station, L5 point above Earth_

"My friends, my people. The people of Earth." The new Prime Minister, Yoshiko Kusinagi, stood at a podium on the bridge of the newly constructed ship. "This faster-than-light ship is the largest breakthrough since the integrated circuit, and it will take humanity out into the galaxy. No longer will we be trapped by the boundaries of our own sun, but step forth to take our place on a galactic stage!"

Different cameras focused tightly on her face, the bridge of the newly christened _ASV Enterprise_, and the proud crew standing behind her. The drive had already been tested, of course, crossing the entire solar system in a zigzag, visiting every single planet in order out to Neptune, then further out to drop by several of the dwarf planets like Pluto and Xena.

"This heroic crew, led by Captain Christina Pike will visit Alpha Centauri first, to find out the fate of the Manswell Expedition, launched almost a hundred and seventy years ago, then on to visit several of the other stars closest to Sol." The hispanic woman nodded respectfully at her name. "The systems we've seen, through the focused lens of telescopes for the last two hundred years, finally to be seen in person, to have humans land, to see whether the garden worlds we predicted are habitable." Yoshiko paused again, looking straight into the cameras. "To boldly go where no human has gone before, but where so many of us want to."

She nodded to the reporters, and stepped aside, letting them query the crew, asking questions of import and banality, feeding the voracious appetites of twelve billion humans on Earth, and another half a billion scattered in settlements on Luna, Mars, and seven moons of Jupiter and Saturn. "Prime Minister?" She looked up in surprise, to see one of the crewmen, his jumpsuit labeled 'Russell.'

"What can I do for you, Mr. Russell?" she asked calmly, perfectly aware of at least two cameras recording them instead of the rest of the crew.

"Ma'am, do you expect we'll find alien life out there?" he asked eagerly. _Oh gods, is he a religious whack-job who managed to get on the crew despite the screening, or a sci-fi fanatic?_

"Well, if any of those garden planets have life, then it will technically be alien," she said disarmingly, "but if you mean are there intelligent species out there for us to run into? I hope so. I'd hate to think we're alone in the galaxy."

"Me too. Thank you, ma'am." He saluted her crisply, and faded into the back of the crowd, avoiding the reporters. _Sci-fi fanatic. That's the better of the two options, at least._

She had to answer several more questions, of course; running the business of the entire solar system meant that no matter what you did, some focus group of a billion would be pissed off at you, and the press liked nothing more than asking annoyingly-phrased questions. But she hadn't spent twenty years in the Alliance Parliament, and fifteen years before that acting, for nothing. In an hour, when the press time was done, she left the ship last, behind the reporters, and at the airlock turned back to the captain.

"Good luck to you and your crew," she said, extending a hand to Captain Pike.

"I'm just glad none of my five hundred crewmen are named Kirk," she said, sotto voce, hopefully quiet enough that none of the cameras caught it.

Yoshiko's smile grew slightly along with a twinkle in her eyes. "I'm just glad they released the remake before you left."

"Amazing, isn't it? Three centuries later, and a cheesy sci-fi show is responsible for half the technology we have on the ship. Directed magnetic shielding, instantaneous communication regardless of our place in the galaxy, 3D fabrication to spec." Pike's mouth quirked up in a smirk. "I don't know about the hot green alien space babes, but I'll keep an eye out for warrior aliens with funny foreheads and infinitely reproducing furballs."

"Bring those home, I can give them to the grandkids as presents," Yoshiko responded, finally letting go of Pike's hand. "Godspeed, Captain."

"Shouldn't it be, 'Live long and prosper'?" Pike quipped, stepping inside and closing the airlock.

The various viewing areas from Ascension Station, halfway between Terra and Luna, were packed with reporters, family members, and various important people of the government, watching and filming as humanity's first interstellar ship cruised away.

* * *

_August 4, 2243, Lacaille 8760_

The _ASV Enterprise_ cruised into the fifth system of their voyage. Alpha Centauri had been heartbreaking, the forlorn remnants of the colony abandoned to the elements. A small detachment of the crew, thirty men and women, remained behind to investigate, but the preliminary evidence implied the colony had caught some contagion that killed off over half the colony, weakened or crippled the rest in some fashion that left them dead sometime shortly afterwards.

This system should have been fairly simple, though. A red dwarf star, with what was probably a thin asteroid belt or thick kuiper belt, small objects barely detectable crossing between the star and its light.

That was what the expected, anyway. The Enterprise was an arrowhead-shaped vessel, loaded with sensors of all kinds, armed only lightly with railguns and guided missiles. So when, five minutes after dropping out of FTL, he caught a glimpse of an entirely too regularly shaped object, the sensor tech thought for a moment that his instruments were malfunctioning. "Ah, Captain?" Lieutenant Russell twisted around. "I'm zooming in on an anomaly."

Captain Pike blinked as the paper-thin main display switched to show what was clearly not an asteroid. "Is that a spaceship?" she asked.

"Unclear. No sort of energy discharge, it's just cruising along at a nice soft two-hundred-thousand KPH, ma'am." He tried focusing the cameras a little better, queuing up VI commands. "It looks artificial, though."

"Helm, match course and speed," she ordered. "XO, alert the crew. I don't want anyone at General Quarters just yet, but I want us to be ready to do so." She studied the ship quite closely. "What's the projected course?"

Her helmsman, Lieutenant Commander Aremu, scowled. "If we match with it, we've got about a month to find out everything we can about it. Then we'll fall into the star." She looked over her shoulder at Pike. "Assuming we can grapple it in the next day or so, we can divert its course away from the sun, but I don't feel overly confident calculating what kind of slingshot course we'd give it."

"Understood. Check with Engineering, but I want to get this put into as stable a course as we can, if it turns out to be important." She leaned back in her chair, lifting a data tablet from the arm of her chair. "Comms, patch me through to the Marines commander."

"Colonel Shepard here, what's happening?" The Marine officer, in charge of their fifty solders, was a tall, swarthy, blond Viking of a man, decorated in the last major Terran conflict in Zaire, as well as the Asteroid Uprisings. Most of his men were as decorated and experienced as he was.

"We found what might be an alien spacecraft. I need teams ready to board, because it appears to be dead in space." His eyebrows shot up, and he ran a hand over his buzz cut eagerly.

"I'll be there myself. Dragoons, armor up!" he shouted, and cut the channel.

Two tense hours went by, as the gossip ran rampant among the eight hundred men and women of the crew. Even most of the night shift was awake, despite the 1430 ship time expected for their course to match. All eyes were glued to windows and displays as the helm officer brought the _Enterprise_ up alongside the swiftly moving vessel.

"One hundred meters away," Aremu said proudly. "Preparing to deploy docking grapples." The grapples were magnetic attachments on the end of meter-thick armored cables, attached to kilometer-long spools, and had been designed primarily to catch small, metal-rich asteroid fragments to be deconstructed by nano-bots for shipboard part manufacturing. But the engineers had also planned for events like this, even if finding a derelict alien ship was not precisely in the plan.

"Firing grapples, deploying marines," Shepard said over the radio. The force of the release couldn't even be felt from the bridge, but the many cameras captured it on film. They trailed out, five of them, latching onto the smaller alien vessel, and holding fast. Twenty marines attached to the cables, four each, and raced across on small powered climbing wheels. "There appears to be a hatch at coordinates 03-140-2. Attempting to access." They had come up on the 'top' of the ship, hastily designated so by their Chief of Engineering, Captain Adams.

It took them a few minutes, but with some old-fashioned elbow grease and a crowbar, the access hatch was open. "This ship looks more organic than constructed," Shepard reported back. "It does have an airlock, though no sign of power. We'll try not to blow the ship out to vacuum.

Some of the helmet camera feeds were being broadcast throughout the ship, and Shepard's was being broadcast back through their quantum communicator to Earth. Yoshiko, her Cabinet, and a dozen of the Senate were with her in a large briefing room. No reporters, yet, but that would come in time, too. "Nothing in here is labeled," Shepard complained. "The airlock is big enough for ten at a time. Davis, try that lever there."

As they watched, the outer airlock door closed, seven marines inside. "No pressure increase, so I'm hoping we don't damage anything. Now try that lever," his hand pointed in the camera feed to Sergeant Davis, who manipulated another handle on the inside wall. The inner door cycled slowly, grating noise echoing up through their feet into the camera. "No atmo on board. Either they vented the ship, or there's hull damage we didn't see on approach."

"Understood, Colonel. Explore cautiously." Pike was twirling a datapad stylus in her fingers, the only nervous tic she hadn't been able to get rid of, and waved off her yeoman's offer of coffee.

Another set of seven marines cycled into the ship, leaving six more on the outside to guard their escape, just in case. The alien vessel was definitely somewhat organic, but also heavy on crystalline structures. No occupants were found on board, but the marines cautiously explored rooms filled with unfamiliar technology, until they reached the heart of the ship.

On the _Enterprise_, the very heart of the ship was mostly storage spaces, with the bridge just above them and the engineering core just below it. Half of the eezo found in Sol had been laboriously collected by robotic miners from the atmospheres of the gas giants, and put together in a power core the size of a bus. Where the storage rooms were, instead, was a large, open space, that caused all of the marines to twitch their safeties off.

"Ma'am, I think I've seen this movie before, and I didn't particularly like how it ended," Shepard said, as his camera swept across a room, around twenty meters in diameter and roughly circular, every square inch of the floor covered in what looked like large, leathery eggs, ranging in size from golf ball to one beach ball sized one near the center.

"I saw the same movie," Pike responded, licking dry lips. "Confirm no hostiles in the area, then retreat back to the Enterprise for now." She looked up at her yeoman. "I think I'll have that coffee now. Prime Minister, your orders?"

"The warp settings for the _Enterprise_, according to my briefs, can be expanded much wider than they are currently. If you can fit it in the warp field, bring it back to Sol. We'll park it outside of Luna's orbit and very carefully find out what these were." The Commandant of the Alliance started to protest, and she shut him down with no more than a steely gaze. "If that's not possible, put it into as stable an orbit as you can manage, and come home, so we can figure out what the hell to do about it. I'm not going to leave it around a fluctuating red dwarf star any longer than I have to." Yoshiko took a sip of her own glass of water. "Any other signs of alien life out there?"

"Not yet, ma'am, but the mission is still young," Pike said, her voice skipping a little. "I'm kind of hoping no one shows up looking for this one, though."

"I'll drink to that. Keep me informed. Tell the Marines not to touch anything else on board, but have some of your science staff head over and take visual documentation of everything." She paused as an aide came up with a datapad. "And now, Captain, I have to go deal with some stupid filibuster of Mars trade regulations."

"Glad we're so high on the list of priorities," Russell muttered, quiet enough he didn't expect to be heard, so Pike's snort of laughter made him blush. "Nothing else has entered the system within lightspeed monitoring, Captain."

"Good. Colonel, retreat to the airlock. I'm going to send down some science staff to do visual documentation. Aremu, you've got the bridge, I'll be down in Engineering." She handed the coffee cup back to her yeoman and strode out.

Shaking her short braids back behind her ears, Aremu switched chairs, motioning one of the chiefs to take her station. "Just please tell me, those aren't snakes," she muttered.

"Maybe they're giant bugs?" Russell guessed.

"That's better than snakes," she said.

* * *

_August 10, 2243, outside Luna orbit_

The _Enterprise_ appeared suddenly, so far as the visual sensors were concerned. The alien ship had carefully been reeled in until the two ships were barely five meters apart. Cushioning material had been fabricated hastily, placed between them to maintain the distance, and then the manually recalibrated warp field took them all home.

They slowed into a stable orbit, waiting for the various in-system ships to approach. Crew were already standing by in EVA suits when the first ships arrived, and the alien vessel was carefully detached, the cushioning material fed back into the nanite deconstructors and added to the supply tanks on board, ready for the next task. Regular comm systems were screaming with news and extranet data, as every single news source in human space proudly proclaimed, "We are not alone!" in various tones of awe, expectation, and paranoid fear.

"So, Captain," Aremu asked, as they waited to step out into the approaching shuttle and return to Ascension Station, "what do we do for an encore?"

Pike just grinned, brushing a piece of imaginary lint off the medals of her dress blues. "We go back out there, and head the direction that ship came from, and see if we can't find out who it came from. You know, easy stuff."

* * *

_April 1, 2244, alien space vessel_

"This is the last one," Jarvis Euodio said through his radio. He carefully filled the edges of the patch with the proper vacuum-rated epoxy filler, sealing off the hull breach. "And we're golden. I can't wait to see how some of these things work without having to squint through the damn helmet."

"Amen to that," Lydia muttered back. "Now keep talking sexy to me in that Afrikaans accent of yours." He laughed loudly, walking over the surface of the ship. Above him, struts and chambers gleamed faintly as they turned in high orbit, marble-sized Earth barely visible every once in a while. "Soon as you're in the airlock, we'll start pressurization."

His steps were as swift as he could make them, the organic-looking hull still possessed a high enough metal content for the magnetic boots to get a good foothold. Of course, after watching Hash float off last month, and nearly lose a leg when he passed through the spinning research facilities above them, Jarvis was not going to rush this. No matter how badly he wanted to see what this alien ship did.

The eggs, they had already determined, were some kind of arthropoid life. They had taken a few of the smaller ones, the golf ball and softball sized ones, and opened them, dissecting the embryos within. They clearly belonged to the same species, the smaller ones probably being drones of some kind from the number of eggs, and the slightly larger ones being either defenders or more specialized workers. That let them decide, with fairly good accuracy, that the largest egg in the batch must be a queen - and therefore, until they knew what to do with them, it was off-limits. If this species had built this ship - a fairly good guess, given the definitely organic compounds that made up the bulk of the interior walls - then the queen, not the workers, was most likely the intelligence. And if this species had more of them, somewhere out there in the galaxy, the last thing humanity needed to do was start performing experiments on their unborn children.

What worried Jarvis, and many of the other researchers, carefully hand-picked by the Alliance, was the clear battle damage that showed on the outside of the ship. Jarvis was an entomologist, and Lydia, his current partner, was a genetic engineer, so they had to go on the reports submitted by the military scientists. But by all accounts, the ship had been pierced by multiple rounds fired at around one percent of lightspeed, into the belly of the ship. Since the _Enterprise_ had approached from the top, they hadn't seen any of the damage, nor the two dead insect crewmen still clinging to the outside of the ship. The beings had been huge, the size of a terran horse or cow, their corpses long since frozen and boiled by the energies of the stars they passed and the vacuum of space. These, they thought, were the result of the bowling ball sized eggs within, probably highly specialized technicians of some kind.

He stepped into the airlock, manually cycling himself in. There was an empty chamber near the ventral airlock that had been turned into their office of sorts, and Lydia, Kwan, and Major Yauck awaited. "Alright, I think we're ready to test it," he said, glancing at the others. "Who gets the honors?"

Yauck grinned, and gestured to the controls. "Not me. My job is to stand around with the gun acting properly paranoid."

Kwan laughed at him. "I'll do it, then. Once we have some air, then I can get into the guts of this engine and start putting my specialty to good use." The Korean man had spent hours, arguing over comms with his colleagues back on Earth and Luna, as to why the vessel had such an underpowered drive core compared to the Enterprise. From the outside, at least, the ship hardly seemed capable of reaching FTL speeds at all, which had resulted in wild speculation about how it performed interstellar travel.

He inputted several commands into the computers, linked together across the ship by fortified cables carefully attached to the ceilings via hooks. After one accident of someone tripping over a cable, and shattering one of the fragile and expensive computers, the three dozen researchers allowed on board had spent two days making sure they weren't going to lose two months of work waiting for a replacement. "Shouldn't we hear the air cycling in?" Yauck asked after a minute.

"I know you're a gun bunny, but really," Lydia teased him. "The ship has a couple of thousand cubic meters to fill, and that's assuming no leaks. There won't be enough air to reliably carry sound for at least ten or fifteen minutes."

Jarvis had moved to another terminal, accessing the outer cameras. The two shipbuilding experts, the duo who had designed the outer frame of the _Enterprise_ and her sister ships still under construction, were in the office cubicles above them, monitoring the air flow rate and sensors. "I'm not seeing any leaks. All the patches appear to be holding." He looked over at the others. "Unless there's something else I need to help with, I'm taking some of the cameras and seeing how the eggs react to the return of atmosphere."

"I'll go with you," Yauck said instantly. When Jarvis raised one dark eyebrow, the marine grinned. "Hey, I told you, properly paranoid."

"I highly doubt they're going to hatch, wrap around my face, and lay eggs in my lungs," he disparaged as they walked, climbing up the ladder-tubes the aliens used for transit.

"Doesn't mean they might not be hostile when they wake up," he replied, unslinging his assault rifle as they reached the chamber. "Some people are just downright ornery first thing in the morning."

"Ornery? That's really the word you want to use?" Still, they were both grinning, the moreso as a faint hissing noise started to pervade the room, and air becoming thick enough for the sound of its entry to echo properly.

They watched the eggs for another twenty minutes, Jarvis taking careful readings on temperature, ambient humidity, and gently testing the flexibility and resiliency of the eggs as they were exposed to atmosphere for the first time in who knew how long. He was so intent on recording his tests, in fact, that he blanked out what Yauck had said, at first. "Sorry, I didn't catch that."

"I said, do you hear music?" the soldier repeated, now looking around wildly. "Like, some kind of woodwind quartet."

He almost came out with a sarcastic rejoinder, when he realized that he, too, was hearing the music. "Who's broadcasting music over the channel?" he demanded crossly.

There were several moments of silence. "Nobody's broadcasting anything but data right now," Ingersoll replied, safe in the labs outside. "Are you sure?"

"I can hear it too," Lydia replied, "just barely loud enough to make out."

"It's getting louder in here," Yauck replied, and flicked his safety off, putting his back against one of the walls. "I am not allowed to begin hostilities, I am _not_ allowed to _begin_ hostilities," he muttered to himself.

"Something is happening," Jarvis said, looking around. It took him a moment, as the music was starting to grow loud enough to interfere with his concentration, but he realized after a moment that the eggs were ever so gently rocking to the beat of the music. "I think restoring the atmosphere might be inducing them to hatch," he murmured, not realizing that he was singing it along with the music.

And a moment later, the largest one, the queen's egg, did split carefully down the middle, the leathery shell peeling back, as a creature resembling a cross between a shrimp and a cockroach crawled out of it, covered in glistening fluid. Other eggs were hatching as well, and dozens of the tiny, crab-like drones swarmed around her, cleaning the queen. The music was deafening now, drowning out the cries of consternation of the scientists on the laboratories. Without quite realizing what he was doing, Jarvis crawled forward, discarding his helmet and gloves along the way. Somehow, he knew _just_ where to place his hands and knees to avoid crushing any of the hatchlings or any of the still-viable eggs, and he paused in front of the queen, extending one hand slowly. "My name is Jarvis," he sang, as she ran her pedipalps and mouth over the surface of his skin.

_My name is Cries-Out-In-Darkness_, the song reverberated through everyone on the station.

Ten kilometers away, the in-systems cutter _Swordfish_ sat watching everything nervously. "What the hell is going on over there?" Chief Eisley muttered. "Missiles are still locked. Awaiting your command, sir."

"No. We're not blowing it up until we know that the team has been compromised somehow," Commander Davis said. "I wish the remote vid feeds were a little more clear, though. They're all talking about music and singing, yet nothing's coming over the audio." They monitored for two hours, as Alliance military brass grew more and more concerned.

Finally, two and a half hours after the atmosphere had been returned to the ship, they received a clear message back. "This is Jarvis Euodio, and the aliens have hatched and communicated. Their queen is called Cries-Out-In-Darkness. They have a kind of genetic memory, passed down through telepathic contact. The reason we found them, is because several other species subjected them to xenocide. They were put into a time capsule, of sorts. Prepared for the possibility of awakening on another planet."

"Why were they subjected to xenocide?" Prime Minister Kusinagi asked.

"Ah, that's not entirely clear. My understanding, from sharing Cries' memories, is an inability to communicate, along with a desire on behalf of those aliens not to share habitable planets." Jarvis' voice was still half sing-song as he explained. "Two alien races, both semi-aquatic, I think. They tried to exterminate the Singers, and when they started to lose, they found a race of vicious lizard-analog species, and accelerated their war. We found this ship, because none of the Singers survived to come rescue them."

Several minutes of silence reigned on the communications channels, as Yoshiko argued with all of her advisers, her Cabinet, and the top people of the Alliance military. "Jarvis, can you move to a functioning camera? The few inside the egg chamber don't have a good angle." In response, the entomologist fumbled around, finally moving over to where Yauck, still wide-eyed, had slumped against the wall, and stared into his helmet cam. The entire room inhaled sharply when they caught sight of his face, the eyes now a brilliant shade of turquoise covering the entire surface, lid to lid. "Are they friendly?"

"They are, Prime Minister. They want only to return to their homeworld in peace." He paused, cocking his head. "Cries wants to learn more of us, our music and our culture. She says their homeworld was seven relay jumps away." He frowned. "I'm not sure on what a 'relay' is, exactly. Her mental image shows a large space-station like structure in space, that allegedly allows for transit of several thousand light years in an instant. They found them, and used those to colonize other planets."

In the protected chamber aboard Ascension station, silence ruled for a moment. "If these, ah, Singers, found them, then it begs the question, what happened to the species who _built_ them?" Admiral Roskov muttered.

Yoshiko pushed the talk button, mouth set in a grim line. "All they want from us is our culture, and a trip home? And what are they giving us in return?" She watched through the camera as he frowned, obviously trying to mentally discuss this with the queen, who lurked behind him, just barely visible in the frame. Her first impulse was to pull off her shoe and beat the thing until it stopped moving; she'd never liked bugs.

"They can teach us how to use the relays, and where to find many of them. The queens and the brood-warriors are telepathic, and can," he paused, obviously trying to put words to the clarity of thought, "'sing unifying songs' to our military. The workers can create numerous organic compounds far more easily than we can do using artificial processes." He looked over his shoulder at the queen, joy suffusing his face. "They will need food soon, Prime Minister. We can't let them starve."

"We'll be in touch," she said, and cut the channel, leaving a frozen image of the scientist's starkly changed face on the screen. "Thoughts?"

Roskov spoke up again. "Assuming they're telling the truth, we need to find where these 'relays' are near us, and set up observation posts. Figure out how they work. If we could be subject to an invasion from ten thousand light years away, we can't respond right now."

Secretary of State Yoko nodded. "Not to mention, the ways to expand. The _Enterprise_ has already found one perfect garden world, and two marginal ones. The distance involved means setting up colonies will take years. If we can find these relays, though, we can expand faster. The ecosystem is being held together with duct tape right now, and even the terraforming efforts on Mars are just barely enough to feed the colonists there."

Senator Clark sighed, running one hand over his perfectly bald head. "Not to mention, as distasteful as some of us find insects, they are the equivalent of a passenger plane full of children. We can't starve them to death, or blow them up, or do anything other than help them, or we risk some nutcase with a point trying to get a charged under the Dehli Accords."

More voices started to speak up and argue here, stopping only when Yoshiko raised one hand sharply into the air. "Jarvis? Tell Cries, we will send over food supplies, and we will increase the size of the facility around the ship. But we can't permit them to leave, until we've determined several things, such as possible disease vectors between species."

"And whether or not she's telling the truth, I take it?" His voice was sad, but understanding. "Prime Minister, what about taking them to Shandrakor?" That planet was one of the two 'marginal' ones charted by the _Enterprise_, the surface covered largely in either thick rainforests or barren deserts, with temperatures around the equator running to 80C.

"We haven't even landed anyone there to verify if it's safe," Yoshiko protested. "I can't turn it over to a ship full of aliens, no matter how friendly they might be."

Cries scooted forward then, crawling into Jarvis' lap to come closer to the helmet camera, her multiple blue eyes sparkling in the light. "She promises, they will explore the surface for us. They can tunnel underground facilities to keep us safe from the surface heat, and given the harsh qualities of their homeworld, she does not think much there will present a hazard to the Singers."

"I'll take it under consideration," she promised, "but even if I agree, it'll take time to arrange transportation and initial supplies."

"Are you sure this is the wisest course?" Roskov asked.

"I think I'd rather make them an ally than an enemy. They got right into his head, Admiral," she said pointedly. "Not the kind of people I want as enemies."

He lifted his water bottle grimly. "Here's to a long, and hopefully prosperous, friendship," he said mockingly.

* * *

Author's Note: ASV = Alliance Space Vessel. Simple and unimaginative. So ends prologue one!


	2. Prologue 2

_Author's Note: Holy cow, this turned into my second most followed story in only **three days**. I'm eager to see what everyone thinks of the second prologue, detailing a few more important events of the rise of the Alliance.**  
**_

_Author's Edited Note: After several people pointed out the comparatively weak sauce of my combat physics, I made some edits. I haven't taken physics since high school ... 17 years ago. (Yeah, I'm old, now get offa my lawn.)_

* * *

_September 17, 2287_

"And you're sure I need to listen to this girl? Because honestly, she sounds like a crackpot," Prime Minister Luigi Bertonelli said crossly, skimming over a brief on the status of the three colonies Humanity, with their Singer allies, had founded.

"I'm fully aware she sounds like a crackpot," Commandant Lassard said equally crossly, "when all you know about her theories is the sound bites from the news. But I've actually looked at her data, and the doctor knows her stuff."

"I knew her in college," Secretary of Education Kono chimed in, "when we were both undergrads at Hawaii State. She's a bit of a dreamer, yeah, but she went on to get her PhD at MIT, and she was hand-picked to investigate those Prothean ruins on Mars. It's possible she's wrong, but unlike the Commandant, my degree wasn't in astronavigation."

Bertonelli sighed, and waved a hand irritably. "Fine, fine, let's bring her in and hear what she has to say." He continued flipping through the briefs his advisors had brought for him, looking at fuel prices and plans for adding a fourth colony and a security report at a religious group wanting to re-start the Alpha Centauri settlement to 'put the spirits of the dead on the path to eternity.'

"Hello, Prime Minister, I'm Aya Verner," she said, causing him to look up and blink in shock. Her eyes, like those of a very small but steadily growing minority, were Singer blue across the entire surface. The change, he understood, was mostly cosmetic, aside from a minor increase to color sensitivity and ultraviolet. The main difference was their ease in communicating with the Singers, their confusing if eager partners.

"You've got five minutes. Go," he muttered brusquely, reaching for his morning tea.

"I've found the Prothean relay. And we should move it." He paused the mug halfway to his mouth, and quirked an eyebrow, finally motioning her to a seat. "The relay has been encased in several million tons of rock and ice. Most people on Earth know it as Charon, the moon of Pluto." He didn't quite choke on his tea, but it was a near thing. "We could clear the debris, and probably get it operational again, but given what they've told us of the galaxy, I don't think that's a wise thing. At least, not without giving ourselves an edge."

"Alright, you've got my attention, so spill the details," he said over the edge of his cup.

"As you're aware, the Prothean ruins contained three small ships of theirs. In the main, their engines and navigation system were nearly identical in capability to those aboard the Singer vessel. Which makes sense, as the Singers discovered FTL travel and relays after discovering a derelict spacecraft of their own. From the memories they have, their ships were evenly matched in maneuverability and speed when compared to the three races allied against them." He waved a hand for her to continue. "I've taken one of their ships out for a trial run, out to our colony of Kohana. The original _Enterprise_ made that transit in one hundred and seven hours. The third iteration of the warp drive, in tests, should be able to do that in eighty two. The Prothean vessel did it in eighty six."

"So we're better than they are, if marginally," Bertonelli said, unimpressed.

"Yes, sir, but that's eliminating one important detail." Aya raised her vambrace computer, generating a quick hologram of the two systems. "These are the arrival and departure points of our ships." Two points of light appeared, just outside the two planets. "These are the Prothean arrival and departure points." Two more points of light appeared, but at the very edge of the systems. "The transit time to reach from the planet to a spot where their drive can be engaged is just over a day each way. In addition to that, the impact of the mass effect drive core is much easier for us to detect than the standard warp drive while in FTL."

He looked over at Lassard, who nodded. "With the relay at the edge of the system? We could just warp from Earth to it, a handful of minutes at most. But consider, if we tow it, say, one light year outside of Sol. Should these species attack us through the relay, they'd have to first figure out where the hell our planets _are_ – while our own ships, so long as they can go to warp, will be home in time for us to have twenty-four hours to prepare defenses."

Bertonelli sat, deep in thought, for a good solid minute, his fingers drumming on the mug. "How much effort are we talking about to move this relay?"

"Three _Yoshiko_-class ships should, theoretically, be able to merge their warp fields and move it," Lassard said. "We've got plans in place, though admittedly they were more for diverting rogue asteroids. However, there's no hurry to make a decision," he said calmly.

Aya nodded, and continued. "So long as the relay remains locked in place, it cannot be transited through. The relays have moving parts which help channel the mass effect fields they use to create the wormhole paths between them. If those parts can't move, there's a safety mechanism that shuts the relay down completely."

The Prime Minister tapped his fingers on his mug again, sipping quietly at it. "Alright, Commandant. Have the military start working on serious plans to move this relay, and the construction of a joint military-civilian facility to be placed nearby. Assuming we can move it, we will need to explore through it, if only to know where these enemies will be coming from."

"Civilian, sir?" Lassard asked, clearly confused. "You want to send unarmed civilian vessels through the relay?"

"Oh, not at first, no. But once we've done a preliminary survey of a system with a relay?" He grinned as he tipped up his mug, then scowled down into the empty bottom of it. "But let's face it – there's a whole galaxy out there of largely unplundered riches. We can let people go it on their own, and let them pay for the privilege of risking their ships for a possible profit, or the naming rights to a new colony. Or, we can shoulder the cost on the backs of the taxpayers, and triple the amount of complaining that's been going on the last thirty years."

"That's a little cynical," Kono said, despite her smile. "True, but cynical."

Bertonelli shrugged, rising from his chair. "Nice to meet you, Doctor Verner, but I now have three different meetings all scheduled for the same time to go to. Reminds me of being on the board of GeneCo."

He bustled out the door, ignoring her continued attempts to talk, leaving her to slump back down in the chair. "We don't _need_ to explore that much," she lamented to her former classmate. "Once we find a single system the Singers are familiar with, we have a good thirty to forty relays mapped out."

"Of course we need to explore," Kono countered. "By the time we get the relay moved, we'll probably be on the fifth, maybe sixth, iteration of the warp drive. Imagine making it to Kohana in a mere two days, and it's nearly a hundred light years away." She had a somewhat sad smile on her face. "I've talked to Cries, and some of the other Singers too. They never explored very far away from the relays, not more than twenty light years most of the time. It took too long to transit. So imagine what's out there. And if we can use this as a proof of concept, well."

She had been willing to leave the thought unspoken, but Lassard took it up for her. "If we can move one relay, well, why not move all of them? If an enemy attacks out of a specific relay, drop it into a gas giant – or into a star, if we really need to be rid of it. Once we know where they are, we can figure out the long way around, if we need to. Rather like getting there on a bicycle instead of a plane, but doable." He grinned thinly, standing and setting his military cover over the sparse silver hair. "Those aquatic aliens won't know what hit them if they decide to continue their fight."

"I've got a bunch of meetings too," Kono said, rising reluctantly to her feet. "You going to be on the station for a while? We can catch up over dinner tonight, if you're free."

"Sure," Aya said, still a little rattled at how quickly the most powerful man in the Alliance had blown her off. "Seven o'clock good?"

"I'll have my driver come by your hotel. Really, though, who'd have thought we'd both have the ear of the Prime Minister, forty years ago?"

The scientist laughed good-naturedly. "I'll stick with having the ear of the Singers. They're a little less, um, abrupt."

They both left the meeting room, off to continue their duties, unaware of how much that little conversation would change the face of galactic civilization.

* * *

_February 27, 2514, Widow Nebula_

"Station acquired," Captain Astrid Shepard murmured out loud.

Staring out the window, Watches-The-Veil-Of-Stars sang quietly,_ that is the place in the memory-songs. The home of the cold-swift singers, the ageless-mind-singers_. The nebula was all around them, and in fact this was the third relay they had found out in the middle of space, not circling any star. The Alliance of Songs, of course, had a standard policy now – any system with a certain amount of population or major industry had its relay towed out into the empty space between stars. The few systems with multiple relays had them towed out in different directions. They would stop functioning if they were towed _too_ far away, as experimentation had proved, but a light-year and a half was far enough for military safety, while close enough for traffic. After all, it was only an hour away – if you were in a slow, plodding freighter.

For a military exploration cutter of the new _Crossbow_ class, that Shepard was in charge of, the trip from Ascension to the relay took a mere twenty minutes. "So how did you guys get knowledge of this place, anyway?"

_The ageless-mind-singers were stout, but the fortress of their minds was never impregnable,_ Veil sang. _We saw the space fortress that they called their second-hive, but never did we reach it._ The marine nodded, watching the scanners. She and her crew were one of dozens, sent out by the Alliance to scout, and probe, and find out why two hundred years of exploration had yet to serve up anything of the species that had driven the Singers into temporary extinction.

What they had discovered was dozens of worlds, battered into barren submission, life knocked down to the single-cellular level by multiple kinetic impacts with the surface, and all of it recent in galactic terms. Most of them were no more than three centuries old. One planet was especially jarring, single-celled dextrose-based bacteria surviving on one side of the planet, after what looked like the planet's own moon had been shattered and driven into the surface, the other moon wobbling in an unstable orbit further away from the planet. Fragments and garbage of an alien civilization had been found there, including one intact corpse, obviously native to the planet below.

"All hands, this is the Captain. We have found the enemy Citadel. Repeat, we have found the enemy Citadel." This was the code every exploratory Alliance ship had been waiting for, and their quantum entangler broadcast it back to Ascension Station. "Alpha and Charlie squads, armor up. Bravo squad, on standby. Delta squad, on homeport duty." Each squad was simple, seven marines with one Singer brood-warrior. The large arthropod warriors could use their biotics in a number of ways, but the most significant for military usage was pulling everyone together into a semi-gestalt. Linked marines were almost incapable of friendly fire, an edge mostly reserved for the exploration ships and special forces.

_We approach, yet no one sings songs of greeting or guardianship_, Dances-Under-The-Ice sang up, faint orange worry suffusing the message. _Why is the station silent?_

"I'm with my six-eyed friend," Sergeant Major said through the comms, the sound of Charlie squad putting on their powered exoskeletons loud in the background (yes, as he liked to joke, his name was Major, and he couldn't wait until he got promoted to Sergeant Major Major, just to mess with people's heads).

"I'm backing that one hundred percent," Shepard said, as Veil helped her into her own exosuit. "But we need to get a good read on this place if we're going to blow it to hell." She flexed her fingers, watching the controls on the battle suit respond, the various weapons displaying green ready lights. Veil was busy floating his own extra armor shell over his carapace, slithering the delicate pedipalps into the sleeves. She checked her HUD quickly for the status of her squad. "Alright, let's go show those aliens not to fuck with the Alliance of Songs!"

The cutter swooped in, dropping inside the long arms of the station. The place was impressive, she'd give it that – it was twice the length of Ascension, and more graceful than the squat, blocky capitol, but she'd estimate that their living capacity was probably about the same. And it was, quite eerily, deserted. No ships travelled the vacuum between the arms, no communications came on any band of the electromagnetic spectrum, no weapons were fired or even aimed in their direction. It was making Shepard nervous as hell, as her blue eyes, a growing rarity in Alliance space, flickered over the VI displays.

"There," she said, pointing at what looked like a docking bay around the ring at the base of the structure. "Bring us in to land there, _Argent_," she ordered the VI eagerly. Now, they were going to get some answers!

The platform at the bottom of the bay was just barely large enough for the two squads to line up, side by side. The heavy weapons specialist for each squad would be first out the door, followed by the Captain and the Sergeant, and the Singers quick on their heels. There was one lone being on the dock as they thundered out, a pale green insect-centaur creature, performing maintenance of some kind on what looked like a docking clamp, and utterly indifferent to their arrival. Shouts and threats, even a bullet fired into the deck as a warning shot, produced no reaction whatsoever. "Veil? Icedancer? You guys got anything on these things?"

_They do not sing, but hum with disquieting yellow machine-songs_, Veil responded, unusually cryptic.

_The cold-swift singers and ageless-mind-singers did not treat them of importance,_ Icedancer added, a moment later, having clearly shuffled through the faint clues in their genetic memory. In their war of survival, the Singers had not taken a great number of prisoners, and many of the ones they had taken had never visited the giant station.

"Fine. Let's move forward. That looks like an airlock. Bravo squad, set up here." She led her marines forward, stopping near the door. "Jilani, try that control there."

To their surprise, opening the door was as simple as pressing the green button. They entered the elevator, one squad at a time, enduring the long ride from the interior of the ring to the external 'floor,' gravity here clearly done with centrifugal force instead of mass effect fields. Human paranoia over the alien Prothean technology had mostly limited its use to artificial gravity, shields both personal and shipboard, and military weapons.

They exited out into a hallway, at the end of which was a park of some kind. Feeling paranoid about the emptiness of the station, they moved out into the open space, Charlie squad at their backs, two marines parked in the corners by the elevator as a rear guard. The bulk of the ring was full of the quiet sound of running water and the faint rustling of the purple-black leaves on the nearby foliage. The marines swept the immediate area, the snipers from each squad scanning the balconies above them before looking further down the curve of the ring in each direction.

"Well, that was anti-climactic," Shepard said, cracking her helmet and taking a deep breath. "Gah. Those plants smell like licorice," she complained.

"Captain," Sergeant Major said, "you're breaking protocol by removing your helmet." He kept his voice soft enough the regular grunts wouldn't hear him chewing out the superior officer, but she could see the angry glint of his turquoise eyes through his visor.

_The yellow song grows more painful with each minute here_, Veil complained, causing her to turn and regard the Singer carefully. _Our ancient foes are absent, but this station is not empty._

"Oh, come on," Shepard scoffed. "Look around! There's literally no one in sight. Our bio-sensors aren't picking up anyone, either. This place is _empty_. We can take this place over, bring in Alliance investigators to find out what happened to them, and claim it as _our_ capitol."

_No_, Icedancer said firmly. _Something about this place is inimical to the Singers. _Major nodded along with the thought.

"And aside from that," Major said, on the full frequency, "what happened to those aliens? I doubt they'd abandon this place peacefully. But there's absolutely no battle damage, and this place is a giant city – there would have been house to house fighting. If a plague killed them," he looked pointedly at her cracked helmet, "why haven't we found any bodies?"

_The yellow hurts_, Veil cried plaintively, his mental voice carrying shades of the harsh tone he was hearing. Eight of the marines, the ones with Singer DNA changes, were also fidgeting nervously. "Ma'am, I'm with Veil and Icedancer. We shouldn't _be_ here," Corporal Jenkins said, his own turquoise eyes darting back and forth along with his targeting reticule. "This place is a tomb."

"What, you think the dead are going to rise?" Shepard countered angrily. "It's your imagination, Jenkins! Get ahold of yourself!" The other two marines without Singer DNA were looking between the two groups in confusion. "I'm in charge here. We're going to make a quick survey of the area, then we'll return to the ship to make a report and see how the brass wants us to secure the station.

Veil's pedipalps were thrashing madly, to the point where Icedancer, his senior by twenty years, was trying to help calm him, despite the painful humming echoing through his own head. _Make it stop, by the first singer, make it stop!_ Veil cried out in agony, causing all of the humans to back away slightly. The brood-warrior started twitching, dripping acid as he fought the song in his head.

"Captain, if our Singers are incapacitated, then we need to evac," Major growled. "If you're not going to make that order, then I am removing you from command as suspected of being unable to discharge your duties."

"Sergeant, if you try to remove me from command, you'll be listening to your court martial for mutiny from the medbay!" Shepard shouted, unholstering her heavy assault rifle and pointing it at him. He froze, but two others on the grassy park field did not.

Both Veil and Icedancer lunged at her, sharply-tipped pedipalps oozing acid as they carved chunks out of her armor. Or rather, three of them did, while the fourth ducked through the crack beneath the helmet, piercing her neck cleanly through both carotids and one jugular. Shepard wavered on her feet for a moment as her blood pooled down her body into the feet of her armor, then fell heavily to the ground.

"Incoming!" Jenkins called out shrilly, pointing his own assault rifle towards a swarm of two dozen of the insect-centaurs headed in their direction, armed with mass effect accelerators of their own and opening fire.

The marines had two distinct advantages in this fight. Their powered suits let them carry weapons substantially heavier than they would have in a regular armor suit, which meant heavy assault rifles that could be used to shoot down civilian shuttles or, in a pinch, hold off armored vehicles. The second advantage was a double layer of shields, an outer layer of mass effect shields, based off of Prothean technology, and an inner layer of magnetic repulsion shields, miniaturized versions of starship shields needed for FTL transit.

On the downside, all but two of them were equally distracted by the yellow humming coming in through their disabled Singer compatriots, which impacted their ability to aim, as the mental effects of a bad migraine were hitting all of them. "Back to the elevator!" Major shouted, slinging his weapon in favor of hoisting Veil bodily onto his back, the exosuit straining under three hundred kilos of brood warrior, but still moving. "Retreat! Bravo squad, we are coming in hot!"

"Bravo squad is under attack," Corporal Pallin responded back, their own gunfire echoing in the comms. "The bugs are attacking us in force, and Rainsinger is down!"

"Understood," he grunted, backing off towards the elevator, putting his own shields and armor in the way. All of the green insects were focusing all of their fire on Icedancer now, the brood warrior just barely focusing enough to lob globs of acid at them. Even their tendency to explode when properly perforated was not helping the marines, as they closed in from both sides of the ring. "Everyone into the elevator, no one alive is being left behind!" he shouted again, as they he felt the angry buzz of Icedancer's song suddenly end.

They piled into the elevator, all but standing on top of each other to continue laying down a withering field of fire. The walls were beginning to buckle, as Jenkins laboriously traded his assault rifle for the RPG launcher he carried as Charlie's heavy. "Say hello to my little friend!" he screamed, and unloaded the entire clip of ten in the space of half a second.

The explosion was hard enough to crush everyone back into the elevator, hard enough he could hear Veil's carapace crack under the strain. It also half collapsed the hallway, as the wall panels literally disintegrated under the force of the blast, bringing power cables tumbling down into the mess, tangling around the corpses of the insect guardians who had not exploded themselves.

The elevator crawled up with agonizing slowness, as half the marines aimed assault rifles at the ceiling and half at the floor, expecting an invasion at any second. "Bravo squad, update!"

"We have casualties! Delta squad is providing back-up from the landing bay, but I have three confirmed KIA," Pallin shouted. "Enemy units have an invasion point underneath the walkway between the landing zone and your elevator. You will be arriving with the enemy between us, and we do not have Singer unity!" Part of an explosion echoed as the channel cut off.

"Alpha, Charlie, we are going in hot! Chance of friendly fire is significant, so keep those guns pointed _down_ when you pull the trigger, watch that muzzle climb!" He stopped talking as the elevator thudded to a halt, and every man and woman alive turned their weapons at the door. "Go go go!"

They poured out, firing careful bursts of fire into the roiling mass of green, carving themselves a hole through their attackers, thudding past Bravo squad. Several of them dropped to their knees, opening fire so that Bravo squad could retreat themselves, leapfrogging backwards to the _Argent_ and backing inside.

Major ran through the ship as quickly as he could, entering the tiny clinic on board and kicking the bunk out of the way to set Veil down on the deck. He could just barely hear the Singer's song, all-but-drowned out beneath the yellow buzzing that was intruding on his mind. "Get your crunchy butt together, Veil," he muttered, pulling off the outer armor, and looking at the cracks. As injuries went, it wasn't too bad; a little epoxy and a nice worker massage, and he'd be back on his feet.

"Sergeant, we are dusting off hot!" Pallin's voice came through his helmet. "We are taking fire, but _Argent's_ shields are holding for now."

"Understood," he said, a little preoccupied. The only other combat medic on their ship was Mahmed, but he hadn't seen the swarthy girl after he raced past Bravo squad on his way up. "Where's Mahmed? Veil has a shell crack."

"She bought it during the retreat, along with Jenkins, Jannissy, and Yerba," the corporal said grimly.

"Motherfuckers," Major swore.

* * *

_April 4, 2514, Ascension Station_

_We must insist that Watches-The-Veil-Of-Stars be counted as a casualty of this mission_, Cries-Out-In-Darkness sang grimly.

Prime Minister Deneb and Commandant Asher both looked grim. "He came back alive, though. How can you consider him a casualty?" Asher asked quietly. It was more for the sake of formality than a true protest.

_His voice is now filled with the same yellow hum heard aboard the station_, Cries explained. _We have isolated him, as it started to infect the workers and warriors who came in contact with him. Every Singer-queen alive has come together to try and repair his mind, to remove this contagion, and our only result was very nearly infecting ourselves._ Her eyes were old and unmoving, her carapace dull and faded, as she approached the end of her life, but the first Singer awoken still had a sharp intellect. _We have carefully looked closer at the memory-songs of the Dying War. Many of them have the same yellow hum._

Deneb sighed, rubbing one hand at his own turquoise eyes. "You're saying that, quite possibly, your species made peaceful contact, then that station drove them insane?"

Her pedipalps spread slightly apart. _I do not know. Memory-songs are not perfect, and fade slightly with each generation. Flies-Through-The-Waves, who laid my egg, did have such song present in her. The distance of memory will not infect us, but that station will._

Asher looked over at his elected Commander in Chief. "More than that, I knew that Shepard. Went through OCS when I was the little bitty two-star in charge of it. Broke more records than any cadet in the last century, and I personally interviewed her when she was selected for a _Crossbow_ command. She wanted nothing more than to find the aliens who killed the Singers, and give them a beating they'd never forget. But in the space of five minutes on board that station, she was doing everything short of rubbing her hands together and hissing 'My Precious' at her Sergeant."

"Not typical behavior, I take it," Deneb said dryly.

_The human-Singers were affected too, but none of them is … contagious_. The thought came accompanied with images of a warrior infected with Shandrakor Mumps, one of the few diseases that affected Singers, and human-Singers, but not baseline humanity.

"I'm certainly in no hurry to go check it out myself. But this worries me – if regular humans are, what, brainwashed?" He looked at Asher, who flip-flopped a hand in temporary acceptance of the term. "We'll go with brainwashed, and human-Singers could fall prey to the same thing, just knowing it? Why the hell would anyone use that station in the first place?"

"More than likely they didn't know it," Asher said. "The first explorers find it, come home with the news of an awesomely gigantic deserted space station, that maintains itself with cyborg insects. Who brainwash the inhabitants by mere presence. More people show up, fall into the trap, and soon it's the center of galactic civilization."

"And then, the inhabitants simply vanish, their planets bombarded from orbit to drive them down to pre-Cambrian levels. It's already given rise to all kinds of conspiracy theories about the death of the dinosaurs." The Prime Minister closed his eyes, taking several deep breaths as he ran through the implications in his head. "And we, apparently, missed joining this galactic extinction by mere _decades_."

"Indeed. But what do we do about it? Towing the relay out of alignment only really postpones the problem for later. Blowing it up would be expensive as hell." Asher was tapping his teeth with one nail, his brown eyes shadowed and thoughtful.

_There is a human saying. Turnaround is fair play? Though it begs the question what would be unfair play._ Cries' pedipalps twitched, grooming her mouth as she elaborated on the visions.

Asher and Deneb both blinked in surprise as they considered the idea. "Actually, I rather like it," Asher said at last. "The problem, though, is that we have no idea where a system is with enough spare rock to set up a kinetic missile kill, and it would still take something like a hundred years, or more, to get that missile there." He looked over at Deneb. "Enough time to change our minds, if we have to."

_We must keep any other species from falling prey to such a trap, if we can, while our destruction-songs build to their crescendo._ Cries slowly levered herself to her feet. _I can assign warrior-vessels to patrol, and they can determine where silence reigns and yellow-hum begins._

"I thank you for your aid," Deneb said formally, taking one pedipalp in his hand, as close as they could come to shaking hands. "Tell them to be careful. I don't want to lose anyone else." He sighed heavily. "And give Veil a hero's funeral."

_He will be sung to his rest and remembered_, she promised, skittering out of the room at a stately pace for a Singer.

"This is going to be a hell of a thing to organize," Deneb said. "Military maneuvers, sending more explorers to that region of space, setting up an asteroid once we find it – and then calculating the trajectory properly to hit the station, with or without destabilizing the relay."

The Commandant nodded, rising to his feet and picking up his uniform cover, tucking it under one arm. "When I joined the Alliance Navy, thirty five years ago, military intelligence was promising that they'd be able to reprogram relays in ten years. Yesterday's report I read on the topic said they're only ten years away from now." He shook his head. "Hopefully we'll figure it out before S-day, but if not, I'm in favor of either destroying or quarantining that relay. See if it'll lure out who built it."

"S-day?" the Prime Minister asked curiously.

He grinned and set his cover on his head at a rakish angle. "Smashing day!"

* * *

_July 4, 2548, Ascension Station_

The Alliance cruiser _Hercules_ slowed into orbit. The planet below was mostly brown and blue, the oceans far smaller in area compared to Earth, or virtually any other colony world. Exploration cutters, always the forefront of the fleet, had found this world. Radio transmissions had been few, but present, and the good folk at Alliance Military Intelligence, supplemented with the best and brightest minds from four worlds, had sat down and translated the messages recorded for over a year. Now it arrived for one final test, broadcasting back to earth via quantum communicator.

"Well, Commandant?" Admiral Gonzalez asked softly, looking at her superior.

"When I expected to be making life and death decisions over millions of people, I expected those to be Alliance military who'd signed up for it," Commandant Tasher said. "How sure are we that this translation VI works?" Half a millennia of unified space travel, more than half of it organized by the Alliance, had added on to the death of regional languages and dialects that global trade and travel had started. Thus, the military had been forced to lean heavily upon history professors who specialized in languages, as well as a fair number of rabbis and priests who liked to study their holy texts in the 'original' language.

"We had the VI run a translation there in orbit, then broadcast it back for the Terrible Trio. Aside from the word order, it was spot on," Admiral Karkov explained. The Trio so named were a rabbi, who refused to travel or even communicate via electronic media, requiring recording to be brought to him by military escort; a Stanford professor, age 107, who was hard of hearing, but an absolute whirlwind once they'd started transcribing the language phonetically; and an idiot savant in Kyoto who couldn't even get dressed in the morning, but who was able to speak the language like a native upon listening to the first fifteen minutes of recordings.

"Well, that works for me," Tasher said. He drew himself up straight, and activated the comm. "Prime Minister Small, I am happy to report that the translation software for the reptilian species discovered last year is complete and accurate as we can make it without first contact." He drew in a deep breath, knowing the eyes and ears of three admirals, two generals, the Prime Minster, the Singer-queen, and god only knew how many cameras, were watching this exchange. "Their culture is equivalent to that of the late twentieth century. We have evidence of the natives developing their own space program."

Small, of course, knew it was coming; they'd talked about the VI at every single meeting since the planet had been discovered and the recordings brought back to Ascension Station. "Indeed, Commandant, it is time to let them know they are not alone in the universe, and that they have friends waiting for them." Tasher saluted, and Small returned it, their faces both hopeful and grave in equal measure.

He looked around the room. He couldn't go himself; even if he had wanted to make nice with a species that reminded him uncomfortably of snakes, the head of the Alliance military couldn't take off for the fringes of known space. Technically, neither should he send any of these four, but what good was being in charge if you couldn't bend a rule once in a while for a good cause?

He had run over the choices in his mind a hundred times already. At least, since Davis had died; he wanted to send the old coot, but having retired due to a sudden an unexpected heart attack, the great General Davis just wouldn't do. "Gonzalez," Tasher found himself saying, before he raised his eyes to look at the room. "Go say hi. And do it politely." He grinned as she practically jumped to her feet, turquoise eyes shining, and tried to ignore the barely-veiled disappointment from the other three.

* * *

_July 12, 2548, Rakhana_

The Alliance dreadnought _Gulf of Mexico_ slowed into orbit, the _Hercules_ taking a higher orbit, mixing in with the other cruisers and destroyers escorting the large ship. They had taken the slow way, making their ships extra visible, so that any telescopes on the planet could gauge their approach. At the moment, Admiral Gonzalez was frowning darkly at the datapad, displaying summaries of the last six hours of transmissions. "And we're _sure_ this is good?"

"Absolutely, ma'am," Commander Laris said, the communications officer having double-checked the VI software personally. "They're not surprised to see us, exactly, but they are terrified."

High resolution cameras had caught evacuations, as the lizard-like natives crowded into bunkers, or dispersed into the countryside. Yet for all of that, the planet did not display impacts of space-to-surface weaponry. Audio and visual broadcasts had been full of messages from authorities, urging citizens not to panic.

Coming to a decision, she settled into the "guest of honor" chair on the bridge, and faced the display. "Open up broadcasting on their video frequencies, and prepare the VI for auto-translation." Ten seconds later, Laris gave her the thumbs-up, as he leaned over the shoulder of the petty officer running the actual equipment. "Greetings, citizens of Rakhana. My name is Admiral Gonzalez, of the Alliance of Songs. My government comes to you in peace. We want you to know that you are not alone in the universe, and that you have friends out here in space, waiting for you to join us."

Five minutes later, her cheeks were growing strained from maintaining the careful, shallow smile, and there had still been no response from anyone on the surface. _I don't know what I was expecting_, she thought grimly, _bureaucracy is probably the same among these aliens as it is at home_.

Finally, Laris gave her the subtle signal that meant, 'Incoming transmission,' and posted it to the main screen. On it, one of the lizardfolk, male or female she couldn't tell, was nervously standing in front of a pair of flags, much the way the Prime Minister made speeches, except with no podium. "What are your terms?"

Gonzalez blinked, thrown completely off track. "Our terms? For what? Joining the Alliance?"

"What are your terms for our people?" the lizard insisted, the VI translation not carrying the clear emotion in the clicking, hissing voice. "Two aliens have come to our world. Both have taken from us. You are alien, you come to our world, therefore, you are here to take from us. What are your terms? Are we to give up a tithe of our population, after you damage our ecology? Or must we set out our best warriors, to be hunted and eaten like prey?"

The Admiral's face immediately went flat and angry. "Are you completely _fucking sure_ that translator is working correctly? Because it sounded like she just accused us of showing up to kill and _eat_ them," she hissed at Laris, who had shoved the petty officer under the desk terminal, verifying hardware as he leaned over the chair, running diagnostics.

"Ah, captain?" the sensor tech called out from the front of the bridge, "I have ships entering through the relay. Quantum buoy scans show they're, well, not human." The main screen split, the lizard getting shoved off to one side, as the four ships came on the display. They were blocky, almost crude; long rectangles assembled around a trio of mass effect cannons.

"You!" Gonzalez pointed at the native, who instantly flinched. "Broadcast the image to them. Who are these people? Do you know them? Do they understand your language?"

"Those are the yahg." It took her a moment to understand the name, since the VI translated it phonetically instead of as a word; the lizard just sounded like it had coughed. "They come, every few years, and demand a hunt. The better our warriors, the fewer of us they take."

Gonzalez was trembling with barely suppressed rage. She'd been on Haceldama during the food riots, when the hydroponics systems supplying the new colony had broken down, and that had just been half rations for three weeks until relief supplies could be brought in. "Captain, set this battlegroup at those intruders. Give them one chance to turn around and go home."

Captain Gudsson was no fool; you didn't command a warship with eight thousand crewmen if you were an idiot. "Aye-aye, admiral. Laris, use only one quantum buoy, but broadcast a message to the intruders on local frequencies. Tell them that this system is off-limits, and to take themselves back wherever they came from. Let's see what their response is."

Ten minutes went by in agonizing slowness, as the ships turned around, boosting out of orbit to reach a point to engage their warp drives. "Captain, the quantum buoy has been destroyed by kinetic rounds," Laris said.

"Those bastards!" Gudsson hissed. "Those buoys cost a hundred eighty million credits a piece! You know what that's going to do to our budget for next year?"

The _Gulf of Mexico_ was, ironically, the second-fastest ship in the battlegroup, her drive-core oversized to supply power to ten major mass effect railguns. Firing all ten simultaneously had never been done under battle conditions before, since no isolated band of criminals or religious cult had the resources to build a ship that measured a one thousand two hundred meters, stem to stern. They dropped out of warp, five minutes out, where the intruders were barely passing the outermost orbit of the sixth planet, too far away for them to take shelter behind.

"All main guns, lock on target Bravo and open fire," Gudsson said eagerly. The entire dreadnought shuddered as the guns shot their payload, ten kilogram slugs of titanium, forged to withstand the acceleration to one percent of lightspeed, fired in bursts of twenty. They watched as, in the space of one point two seconds, the invading ship went from a viable vessel to a collection of scrap parts scattered across a hundred kilometers of vacuum. "Missiles lock onto target Delta and fire."

The yahg ships had been caught by surprise by their sudden appearance, but opened fire themselves. Target Alpha had turned on the dreadnought, opening fire with her own long guns, and the ship rocked again, the helmsman frantically firing the engines to halt their rearwards momentum. "Mass effect shields completely down, magnetic shields at seventy-eight percent!"

Another of the yahg ships had fired on the _Hercules_, leaving her drifting, dead in the water, while another destroyer had caught the blast only obliquely, her pilot already starting to move the _Shining Path_ out of the way when the much larger rounds hit, now limping away with major damage and no shields whatsoever from only _one_ hundred-kilo round striking true.

"Those things pack almost the same punch we do, captain," the sensor officer shouted. "Main guns are reloaded and ready to fire!"

"Hit target Alpha, their shields are still up," Gudsson growled, looking at the tactical display now over his lap. The shields on Charlie and Delta were down, courtesy of the shots from the cruisers and destroyers and missile barrages from all the ships. "What did Charlie and Delta just launch?"

"Unclear. Possibly shuttles, or maybe boarding pods?" The bus-sized projectiles were arrowing in at the ships, clearly guided, all of them aiming for ones lacking shields, even as Alpha was obliterated, the blast wave taking out several more of them. The _Gulf of Mexico_ rocked from another shot. "Shields down completely! Hull breach on decks 05, 06, and 07!"

"Get those damage control teams out there," Gudsson shouted, "and fire another missile spread. Target those pods!"

The automatic loading machinery was sending grinding noises rumbling through the structure of the ship as the second wave of missiles launched. Most of them struck their targets, but a few, whose pilots were luckier or more skilled, dodged, and the guided explosives acquired new targets. Three of the five remaining struck the dreadnought, the other two both catching the damaged _Shining Path_. "All hands, stand by to repel boarders!" Gudsson shouted, then grinned at the Admiral whose eyes were glued to the tactical display. "Never expected I'd have to say that one out loud."

For each pod, two Singer brood warriors and a dozen marines responded. The exo-suits had not gotten noticeably smaller in the last thirty years, so when a dozen eight-foot armored warriors, flanked by a pair of three-hundred kilo Singers, the average crewman got the hell out of the way.

"Pull up the helmet cams, I want to see what we're fighting," Gonzalez ordered, and the main screen switched from the display of two damaged yahg vessels, both leaking atmosphere but still capable of firing, were replaced with the jouncing view from a Lieutenant Grissom. The boarding pod he approached had latched onto the hull, some kind of energy welding device carving a giant circle side enough for an armored soldier to walk through without ducking. Emerging from the hole were a species incredibly gruesome, as though someone had crossed an ugly spider and the Hulk, both in coloration and face.

The yahg charged, bellowing loudly, and the four marines with clear fire lanes opened up on it. Two more boosted their Singer companion, giving him line of sight, and a biotic singularity blossomed in the gaping hole, preventing more of them from coming out to aid the first warrior. "Dear departed ancestors," Gonzalez muttered as the yahg stormed through four assault rifles, his shields had barely lasted a minute, his armor was clearly more holey than a block of swiss cheese, and yet he reached the first one in front.

The yahg grabbed hold of the weapon, tearing it away from the suit in a harsh shriek of metal, and grabbed the marine by both arms. Five of them were now firing, two of them right over the shoulders of the unfortunate PFC Reno, as the alien yanked, straining, and then one arm gave way completely. Both the exo-suit arm, and the fragile flesh beneath it, separated in a heart-rending spray of red blood and hydraulic fluid. Then the view from Grissom's cam went dark, as the brute turned and hit him in the head with the severed arm hard enough to crack the plasteel helm.

"We need to get those boarding pods off the damn ship," Gudsson breathed, his face chalky white. "If there's more than three of those things on each boarding pod, then I don't have enough marines to stop them.

Laris had already switched to a new camera, this one coming from the upper deck wardroom. The open space here was proving to the advantage of the marines, as all of them could open fire. Both brood warriors had grappled with the yahg already inside the ship, and one of them lay crushed on the deck, a gaping hole between the pedipalps where the alien had blown a hole in the armor, then simply punched a hole clearly through the Singer from top to bottom before it had fallen, head nearly dissolved from the combination of acid and bullets. Their heavy was carefully rigging explosives along the edges of the carved hole; the ship's VI had already begun evacuating the air.

One click of a button, and that boarding pod went spinning off into space, the four yahg inside now floating out into vacuum, clawing at their throats. "Why don't they have closed helmets?" Gonzalez wondered out loud.

Laris looked over grimly. "The natives did mention they come here to hunt and _eat_," he said, turning green at the thought.

"Captain, all yahg vessels are disabled or destroyed. Target Delta is showing signs of an incipient drive core overload."

"Who's still intact? Alright. Tell the _Ajax_ and the _Hector_ to grapple it, and send it back through the relay to wherever the hell they came from. Broadcast all data from this species to Alliance HQ, and have the dead ones on board brought to Medical B for examination and preservation," Gudsson snapped out orders quickly, his eyes flicking over the shifting tactical displays. "Once Delta is out of the way, target Bravo's engines with smaller rounds. Just in case it has crew on board, I don't want them going _anywhere_."

Gonzalez motioned to Laris, who flicked the main display back to the native lizard spokesmen, slack-jawed in astonishment at the battle display, forwarded through a quantum buoy left in orbit at a mere one second light-speed delay. "We're not here to hunt you. We're not here because we want your planet – we've got a dozen of our own and more being prepared. We'll be here, when you're ready to step out into space for yourselves. And in the meantime, we'll be moving this relay and setting up an interdiction fleet to stop these _yahg_ from _ever_ coming here again."

"What do you call this violence, then, if you come here in friendship?" the lizard spokesman asked softly.

"It's called the golden rule. Treat other people the way you want them to treat you – and if they turn out to be assholes," she hesitated briefly over the word, unsure if it would translate correctly, "then treat them the way they just treated you. We'll be in touch. The buoy we left in orbit will respond to your frequencies, but only if it's warranted."

Placing his hands together respectfully, he bowed to the camera. "Then the drell of Rakhana look forward to the day we can greet you among the stars."


	3. Prologue 3

_Author's Note: All glory to the hypno-beta, Palaven Blues. Thanks to all of my loyal readers, who apparently continue to grow on a daily basis, which warms the foundations of my cold, stony heart. Here is the last of the prologue chapters; the next update will cover our heroine, Commander Shepard (don't tell me you were expecting someone else) as the yahg war starts heating up again._

* * *

_January 12, 2650, orbit around unnamed planet designated A-17_

"Are we certain this is the place?" Kalwat asked calmly.

"As sure as I can be. Singer memory unfortunately didn't have a whole lot to go on, just a planet full of alien ruins that they never explored," Sparrin replied, shrugging his shoulders.

"It is still an improvement over human memory, though," the drell captain, first of his kind to reach such a high rank, teased him.

"They don't get lost in their memories, though," his XO teased right back. "But from what's available, yes, this is the place. Large planet, slightly heavier gravity, much thicker atmosphere. It's clearly suffered some kind of ecological attack without the kinetic kill strikes common everywhere else in human space."

"In that case, with warning beacons deployed around the relay, we should send down the exploration teams. Three days of detailed scans from orbit should be sufficient." He switched one of the controls on the captain's chair, pulling up the display, and perused the information the science staff had decoded so far. Kalwat was proud of his staff. In the sixty years since his people had joined, they had come to almost dominate the technical and scientific ranks of the Alliance, both those who were military and those who were not. One of the thumbnail images caught his eyes, and he paused to bring it up on the screen. "Sparrin, is that what I think it is?"

Several of the bridge crew of the _Putin_ had also turned to look as Sparrin let out a low whistle. "I could be mistaken, but that looks like a mass effect relay that's small enough to walk through. Is there enough room there to land shuttles?"

"We'll find out shortly. Captain to marines," Kalwat said calmly. "Load up two shuttles. Primary site is marked. Explore and secure the location."

"Aye aye, on our way!" Major Loftin responded. The _Putin_ was an older cruiser, retrofitted for this mission specifically, and carried three Hudson-class shuttles, each one designed to carry a double squad of fourteen marines and their two brood warrior supporters. Loftin was aboard the second shuttle, despite the regulations stating he should stay on the ship and control the operation through personal quantum comms; he had fought tooth and nail to get this assignment and he'd be damned if he was going to sit up there on board when there was a chance to explore an unseen alien ruin.

Despite the ship sensors picking up no sign of yahg presence in the system, they followed protocol and did their own aerial sweep, picking up nothing more than plants and some large insects. The first shuttle landed alongside the mini-relay, human troops thudding out onto the surface, fighting the cloying pressure of the atmosphere. Even the Singers needed full suits here, the pressure high enough to injure the delicate limb joints and pedipalps without reinforcement. The relay was at the bottom of a large, bowl-like depression, the ground muddy and choked with weeds. Unlike its larger, space-faring kin, the relay was unmoving and dark.

One side of the bowl sloped up into a canyon, overhung by the native plant life. As the first squad set up a defensive perimeter, Loftin brought the shuttle down easily, parking it on the other side of the relay. "Everybody out," he said cheerfully, stepping out right behind his troops into the light of the unnamed star. "Irikah, you getting any readings from this thing?"

The lone drell marine was already busy, scanning the mini relay with her suit sensors and a specialized vambrace VI built into her exo-suit. "It is inactive, but could be functional. Unlike a regular relay, the control unit does not appear to be present." Loftin nodded, squinting into the hazy sky, and was about to order the first shuttle to start a larger sweep, when she continued talking. "There are intact metallic cables leading underground in that direction." She pointed at the shadowed canyon. "Unless something on this planet leaves behind a trail of ninety-nine percent pure gold, wrapped in hydrocarbon polymers," she added dryly.

"Somehow I don't see that happening, Corporal," he said. "Second shuttle, fall in on me! We are exploring up that canyon to find the source of those cables. First shuttle, dig in. This system has an active relay, so that makes it fair game for the yahg. Let's not get caught with our pants around our ankles." Since the opening of hostilities, no quarter had been asked or given by the fierce aliens. They only took survivors to be hunted elsewhere and scant few had ever been recovered alive, which meant Alliance relay traffic went through in large, heavily armed convoys when they couldn't afford the average six month transit time by warp for each relay.

They walked cautiously up the canyon, four leading marines pointing their rifles up at the overhanging foliage. The yahg had proven their skill at masking biosigns on more than one occasion, and even if they weren't here, the local insect life could be hazardous on its own, or even the plants. Shandrakor was infamous for its carnivorous bloodvines, and it wasn't the only planet with vicious, hungry plant life. The brood warriors were in the center of the pack, and the two squad heavies had a flamethrower and grenade launcher held at the ready.

The canyon went on for a kilometer, through numerous larger chambers, most of them with roofs long since collapsed and exposed to the elements. At last they were halted by a wall, the structures clearly built across a fault line. Tens of thousands of years of gradual earthquakes had left a difference of nearly seventy feet in height. "Well, fuck," Loftin muttered as they formed up in the chamber below it. "Do those cables continue up this way?"

He was all but vibrating with eagerness as they trotted forwards. "Major, do you forsee needing the rest of the marines on the surface?" Sparrin asked through his headset.

"Not yet. Wouldn't hurt to have them ready, just in case," he responded. "Right now, we're in a long gallery of some kind. Place is probably big enough to fly a Hudson through and not even scratch the paint." They continued moving upwards, finally emerging in a long, flat hallway. "Corporal, any idea what those circles are all over the walls?"

The ceiling here stretched high above them, at least five stories or more, and starting two meters off the floor the walls were meter-wide circles. "I'm not certain, sir," she said, probing with her electronics. "Lots of wires connecting them, most of them broken or decayed with age. Cloudsong, can I get a boost?"

_We support finding answers to query-songs,_ the Singer replied, scooting over to one wall and letting the drell walk up his back. After two minutes of closer examination, she turned back to her commander.

"Sir, I think I can get this open. I might be mistaken, but," she hesitated, "I think these are unpowered stasis pods."

He stared at them. He wasn't a mathematical genius, but he could do the simple multiplication. Stacked twelve tall, and he could count over a hundred on each wall before the gloom grew too dark to count. "Marines, stand by. Irikah, Cloudsong, open it up."

Four marines had their weapons pointed out, two up each direction of the passage, two more with Loftin holding their weapons ready for the coffin-shaped thing as the drell and Singer carefully pulled it from the wall. The coffin screeched on corroded rails before they lowered it to the floor with judicial biotics. After fiddling with the controls for a moment, Irikah gave up, pulling her shovel back out and fitting the edge of the blade into a crack in the pod. With some help from the brood warrior, she cracked it open, air rushing into the pod as she fought to hold it.

After about ten seconds, the lid slid easily open, swinging off to one side, and they stared at the desiccated being inside. It was somewhat insectile as well, but built on humanoid lines, having two arms and legs, but four eyes, and half-carapace half-skin.

"Sir, I've got movement!" PFC Snipes said suddenly, his rifle pointed further down the hall. Everyone's weapons snapped up, the two facing the rear fighting the instinctive urge to look over their shoulder. "Door opened, sir, right there." He flicked the laser sight on his rifle over to visible, instead of ultraviolet, the red dot spinning in a tight circle next to a gaping rectangle in the wall.

"Irikah, take samples. Jones, Zampini, guard her. Everyone else, move up. Cloudsong, you hear any minds up there?"

_No mindsongs. These halls are empty of life._ Despite those words of reassurance, the brood warrior was clearly worried as well. The door revealed an open hallway, with another heavy door at the other end.

"Captain, we are moving forward into this hallway. Somebody opened the door, and I intent to find them." Loftin glanced at the darkness further inside the building/tunnel, still finding no movement. "I recommend having the rest of my marines ready for immediate dust-off."

"They're already sitting in the shuttle," Kalwat said reassuringly. "We're monitoring your signals from here. Be careful."

"I've got a Singer and a squad of marines. Whoever's in here had better be careful," Loftin responded, for the confidence of his troops. "Move out."

The hall was just big enough for two suited marines to walk side by side, and the door at the end proved to be an elevator, descending into the depths. At the bottom, they stepped onto a walkway in the middle of a massive room. If the hall above held thousands of dead aliens, then this room held ten times that number. "Sir, hologram emitter," Snipes said, gesturing again. The end of the walkway held a tall, thin obelisk of some kind, with a fuzzy distorted ball of light suddenly appearing in front of it.

_I still detect no mindsongs,_ Cloudsinger said, unasked.

"You do not bear the taint of indoctrination," the hologram said in flawless, if slightly accented, Alliance Standard. "The cycle has been monitored, and the Reapers have only recently completed their harvest of all organic life."

"Harvest? They bombarded dozens of worlds down to bacteria," Loftin muttered.

"As the final step, yes. To eliminate those controlled by indoctrination. But mainly, they took each space-faring species and harvested them. Their methods and reasoning are still unknown."

"What the hell are you?" Snipes interjected.

"I am a virtual intelligence. The species that created me also created the ruins your species found on Mars. I have less than one percent power remaining to divulge information to you."

"Sir, if it has accessible power inputs, I should be able to jury-rig one of the suits into it," Chamdale said.

"You sure that's a wise idea, Corporal?" Loftin asked.

She snorted. "These suits are good for forty-eight hours of constant fighting. It can at least hold until we can get a generator or something off the ship."

"Alright." He stepped to the front of the group. "Hologram, you have a name?"

"I am Vigil. My power input ports are behind a panel located eighty centimeters behind this primary data storage unit." The hologram blurred sideways, apparently trying to point to it.

"Get to it, Chamdale. Hook yourself up to it. Captain, have you caught all of this?" Loftin asked.

"Perfectly. Which begs the question, how does it know our language, or the location of the Mars ruins?" Kalwat's voice was tight with annoyance.

"Your computers are less advanced in form than Prothean data technology. I accessed your computers via the transportation vehicles in the derelict portions of this facility." The VI delivered this piece of news in the same flat, emotionless monotone it had spoken everything else.

"Irikah, soon as you're done with the alien corpse, get down here. We've got a complex piece of alien computer that will need to be moved, so I want a preliminary plan by the time the ship engineers get down here," Loftin ordered. He started to move back to the elevator, then paused. "What is that miniature relay thing down there?"

"That is a functional relay," Vigil said. "The Prothean Empire was learning how to build their own relays when the Reapers appeared. That one provides a one-way trip to the Citadel."

The Major considered this for several long moments, as Chamdale removed a full section of her armor to expose the components beneath, stripping out wiring sections and connecting them to something behind the spear of rock. "Shuttle one, prepare explosives on that relay."

"Major, are you sure about that?" Sparrin asked. "If we can reverse engineer what they did, that'll be a major weapon against the yahg."

"And this thing could be wrong - or lying - about it being one-way. That Citadel is off-limits, so we should keep it that way. Easiest way for us to make sure the yahg don't get it is to destroy it." Loftin hit the elevator button, gesturing the rest of the marines to guard positions.

"Scorched Earth policies usually end up backfiring eventually," Kalwat pointed out.

"I'm not advocating blowing up the planet, sir, just one piece of suspect equipment. I was going to highly recommend grabbing several other sealed pods and bringing them back with us for documentation." At the top, he exited, letting Irikah in to descend and put her training to good use.

"Alright, Major. I'll back that decision. I can't say I'm eager at the thought of having a relay sitting on board my ship, either." Kalwat closed the channel, and Loftin strode out into the sunlight, directing the other marines to gather pods and transport them. "I'm sending down the third shuttle, empty, to load pods onto. I want as many samples of this species as we can hold."

"Understood, Captain." The channel clicked closed, and they got to work. Twelve hours later, several hours past local sunset, the shuttles docked with the _Putin_. The final cargo was the Prothean VI computer. Alliance VIs could be written small enough to be housed in a vambrace computer, but outside of administrative work, they hadn't caught on very well. Despite centuries of research into the subject, Alliance scientists had yet to come up with a computerized telepathic interface for Singers to use.

Loftin went straight to the bridge, as the technicians and engineering crew began carefully moving the VI and its attached power generator out of the shuttle. "So, what was the final count?" Kalwat asked.

"Twenty pods, only one opened, all under quarantine procedure in Cargo Bay 4." Loftin had all of his marines, starting with Irikah and Chamdale, getting checked out by medical. Nobody had a suit puncture, but people had been known to come down with an infection or illness while getting out of their armor.

"Good. All the scientists back home will be treating it like their birthday." He hovered one hand over the button, then looked back at the marine. "Would you like to do the honors?"

Loftin waved it off. "Nah, go right ahead." Nodding, Kalwat pressed the button. Sixty kilometers below them, the shaped charges detonated. Then the eezo core inside the relay detonated, destroying the entire facility below. The fireball from the explosion reached halfway to the ship.

"Holy Shiva," Sparrin muttered under his breath. "If that was the explosion from a tiny relay like that," he shook his head, afraid to say it out loud.

"We could blow up entire star systems that way," Loftin said, awestruck.

"If the explosion was large enough, more than one," Kalwat finished. "Kalahira's hand of destruction, as my people would say."

"Looks like we have three major breakthroughs to report with this mission," Sparrin said. "I think that calls for a celebratory drink."

"Commander Sparrin, you know I never drink on duty," the drell joked.

"What I know is that it's 2247 ship time, and Lieutenant Fields has been sitting in the corner waiting to start her shift for almost four hours," Sparrin replied with equal joviality.

Making a point of sighing dramatically, Kalwat finally vacated the captain's chair. "Oh, very well. I suppose I can let the Lieutenant have the rest of the shift." They exchanged salutes, and she sat in the chair, already checking with the rest of her night shift for status reports as she took them out of the system, back to the safety of the Alliance.

* * *

_June 14, 2652, Eden Prime_

On an as-yet unnamed garden world, only recently colonized by the humans and Singers of the Alliance, the meager power charge in a cell finally ran out. Alone in his stasis pod, Javik awoke. His time spent conscious was brief, painful, and ultimately futile, since none of the existing Prothean ruins had been discovered. Two hundred meters below the surface, halfway across the planet from the nearest sentient life form, he gasped his last breath, spitting curses against the Reapers as he died.

* * *

_April 29, 2899, Citadel space_

The asteroid came flying through the empty vacuum between the stars, unnoticed and moving fast enough that few starships could match it. To the Keepers inside the station, blind and deaf to their own slavery, nothing different was happening on this day, as they continued their tasks of assembling and deconstructing buildings apparently at random.

The asteroid had been selected, centuries before, placed on a carefully calculated path, started off with mass effect fields and boosted with chemical rockets. It had also been lined with dozens of monitoring systems and maneuvering thrusters, all but one of which had gone dark over the years, ultimately forgotten as the plan had faded out of memory.

It struck one of the wards, most recently named Zakera, at an oblique angle, shattering the giant plate and turning the entire station into little more than a giant cloud of shrapnel. The energy release would still be visible in the next closest system, five light years away, except that it was quickly overshadowed by the explosion from the Widow mass relay as it was struck by a large piece from the tip of the central tower, accelerated to a mere one million KPH by the asteroid.

The resulting explosion struck the remaining fragments of the Citadel with the force of a star going nova, and in less than one second, there were no two molecules left still attached to the station.

Only one man in the Alliance knew anything had happened. Nelson Lubbock was in charge of collating reports on the status of the yahg-Alliance border, and when one of his reports listed "monitoring device 012A" had gone dark, he double-checked the number, found that device 210A had gone off-line, gave a satisfying dressing-down to the intern who had submitted the report, and put it out of his mind. The original plan had been started three and a half centuries ago, and each successive change in leadership had ruled it less and less important to monitor one asteroid when there were hostilities with the yahg to deal with.

In the center of the galaxy, Watrios suddenly came to full alertness. The Reaper had been only semi-conscious, allowing secondary processes to keep up their quiet monitoring of the relay network. For a moment, it did not even realize what was wrong, only that something was horribly, incredibly wrong, then it realized that the issue was not what was, but what was _not_.

For the first time since it had awoken post-Harvest, as a new and glorious Reaper, Watrios could not hear the voice of their maker, their creator, their father (to use a crude organic term). In 0.05 seconds, it had isolated the cause – the destruction of the Widow relay. In 0.18 seconds, it had reviewed all the recent data of the entire galactic relay network.

The Prothean species, that dismal failed race of the cycle before, had locked up more relays than ever before, and had barely been harvested before they learned to build their own and gain independence from the network. Their species had gained prominence a mere ten thousand years after the previous cycle of the Inusannon. To its mounting horror, another species had emerged mere _decades_ after the Harvest, to be followed by two more within centuries. The Protheans had held the record for the fastest appearance in the galaxy by a comfortable two millennia margin.

The first species were a bipedal race, like so many others, coming in a wild riot of colors from pale pink to nearly-black brown, and had been accompanied by another race the Reapers had never encountered. To top it all off, this species had been hidden behind one of the relays the Protheans locked away, probably the only reason they hadn't emerged to be harvested with the squabbling races of this last cycle.

What mystified it the most was how this asteroid had come to devastate the hardware that had housed their maker. The Citadel had been carefully constructed and refined across a hundred cycles, and stood the test of time for half a billion years, capturing every species that encountered it, leading them to center their leadership and indoctrinating them to be prepared for the Reapers harvest. Part of their work each cycle was to sweep the space around it, ensuring that even in the middle of vacant space in the nebula, no errant space debris was present that could do more damage than the Keepers could repair.

Even during the worst of the fighting during the Prothean harvest, an eight century long conflict that had claimed more named Reapers than any since the Citadel was built, Watrios had never known fear, and even facing the destruction of the Citadel and the loss of its creator, it still did not. "Harbinger, there is a problem," Watrios transmitted on the special communication mode the Reapers used to talk among themselves.

It tried twice more, receiving no response either time. Faced with the concept of having to take on this entire galaxy of clearly advanced alien species, with no benefit from the Citadel and no backup coming without abandoning its post to go find them, Watrios experienced fear for the first time since before its organics had been harvested to create it.

* * *

_October 2, 2901, Omega_

The Terminus Systems were just as lawless and rough than they had been in the previous cycle. The giant, hollowed out asteroid of Omega was filled with the dregs and rejects of three races: humans, drell, and yahg. In the ongoing, centuries-long war that raged between the two powers, Omega was the capital of espionage and piracy, territory fought over and held by three different mercenary groups.

In a docking bay in the territory of the Haze, two groups of people eyed each other from across the bay. Weapons were out and visible, all very carefully pointed at the floor. "Bruno," the man said calmly, "if any of them open fire, eat their hearts out."

Rosen was the second-in-command of the Haze — after being drummed out of the Alliance for his addictions — and he worked damn hard to stay that way. His counterparts were a species no one had heard of before, a bipedal insect race with glowing yellow eyes, flanked by cybernetic hunchback bodyguards the size of yahg. Even a mutant giant yahg like Bruno, who stood a whopping 3.8 meters tall, had only a handful of centimeters in height on the creatures. "So, what are you here for?"

The one in the center buzzed slightly. "We need scientific specimens," it said, its VI translating into Alliance Standard flawlessly. "We will trade advanced technology for these specimens."

Rosen looked it carefully in the featureless yellow eyes, one pair at a time. "You want lab rats? Hell, there's tons of those."

It cut him off with a raised hand. "We have very specific requirements. If you can fulfill those requirements, we will provide the technology."

"What kind of technology are we talking about?" Rosen asked suspiciously.

"I will provide a demonstration." It turned, facing one of the empty cargo crates lining the sides of the docking bay. Raising its rifle, it fired a brilliant beam of white-hot energy, carving a hole the size of Bruno's fist in the side. Rosen's mouth instantly began watering as he considered the damage he could do with those weapons, the next time he and the Gladiators had a 'contract negotiation' on G level. "Are you prepared to hear our terms?"

"Yeah. Oh, yeah. Only…." He frowned, looking at the weapon more than the wielder, "what do I call you?"

"You may call me Vanguard. Our species is the Collectors." The human frowned deeper, glancing back and forth at the small group of aliens.

"What about those big ugly brutes?" he hooked a thumb at a particularly hunchbacked one, whose face was decorated with three vertical scars near its eye.

Vanguard cocked its head, looked at them as though it had forgotten they were present, and nodded. "Brutes are an apt nickname. Here are our terms: one hundred of your species without the Singer-DNA modification. One hundred drell with lung deterioration disease. Twenty female yahg with white eyes." _What the bloody fuck is it on about?_ Rosen thought, as it paused. "For each category fulfilled, we will give you ten of these rifles." _Thirty rifles?_

"How do I let you know when I have the, uh, specimens?" he asked after a very, very brief moment of thought.

"Broadcast on this code frequency, and have them sedated for transport," Vanguard said. "We will inspect them carefully before accepting delivery." Raising one hand, a holographic computer interface sprang up, and Rosen felt his own hum quietly as it accepted the data.

"One condition, though," he said boldly. "I need one of those weapons now. Call it an advance payment." The two stared at each other for several seconds, and all of the Haze guards raised their weapons as the Collector suddenly snapped the weapon up, holding it butt first a half centimeter from Rosen's chest.

"One rifle as advance payment for specimens. We accept this deal." Rosen grabbed it, pulling it away smoothly, his own turquoise eyes bright with greed. Wordlessly, the Collectors filed into their shuttle, the organic-looking ship painful to examine too closely. The brutes backed in after them, and they flew off, back to the mystery relay that had already claimed dozens of ships.

Rosen tried not to dance gleefully as he took his new weapon back to their headquarters, but he couldn't stop his crow of excitement when he finally closed the last armored door to his inner sanctum. "What is all that racket?" he heard Jolyn, his partner, lover, and boss, call from the bedroom.

"I found us a new weapon supplier," he said, laughing as he danced through their chambers. She stepped into his path at the bedroom doorway, dressed only in her scales and a confused frown. "C'mon, look at this."

He looked around, finally picking a rock wall three meters thick (they had scanned it before moving in) and pulled the trigger, holding it down briefly, carving a heart in the rock. Her eyes wide, Jolyn stepped over to it cautiously, testing the heat with her hands before leaning closer. "This is almost deep enough to stick my whole finger into, but barely wider than a terminal stylus," she whispered, awed. "Kalahira, who are these people you're trading with?"

"Some species I've never even heard of before. Call themselves the 'Collectors,' all nice and spooky. Promised to bring that up to an even thirty, if we just supply them with some test subjects," he said, tossing it on the couch and reaching for her.

"What kind of test subjects?" the drell asked warily, batting his hand away and ignoring his pout.

"Nothing major. Twenty yahg with white eyes, a hundred humans without Singer eyes," he tapped his own eyelid in example. "Piece of cake."

"You would turn us into slavers?" She didn't sound angry, so much as concerned. A few backwater colonies and mercenary groups had regressed into slavery, and the moment the Alliance had found out about it, they had come down like the proverbial hammer of God.

"Relax. If they come looking, we won't have any slaves," he said, trying for reassurance. "And by the time they figure out, we'll have more than this. Besides, think about it." He slid his arms around her, running his fingertips over the softer scales at her neck. "With thirty of these, we can kick the Gladiators down. Maybe even off the station. With a hundred, we can even take out the Bombadiers."

"Now that, I like the sound of," she whispered huskily, already opening his shirt. "Come get some sugar, baby." He eagerly brought his mouth and tongue to her neck, the natural drell toxin the only drug he hadn't ever tired of.


	4. Ch1: Recruitment

_Author's Note: And the moment everyone's been waiting for, the official start of the story. Enough history! Thank you to everyone who's reading this story - after three week, it's already in the top 50 most followed Mass Effect stories, so I hope this doesn't disappoint!_

* * *

_May 25, 2905, Armstrong Colony, Luna_

"Attention!" the Commandant barked out, her mellow alto echoing over the stands. Commander Teri Shepard stood in ranks with other N7 graduates from years past, everyone who could get free from their assignments long enough to come to Armstrong Colony for the graduation of their new comrades. Her own N7 graduation was three years behind her now, and she still remembered the fierce pride as the Joint Chiefs had gone down the rows, pinning each candidate with the unique black device. This year's batch had seven Singer brood warriors too, their own pins carefully dug into the carapace.

"Graduates, I am proud to induct all of you into the Alliance N7 program," Commandant Ayers addressed the mostly-human crowd. Teri scanned the group; four rows of twenty-one humanoids standing behind seven brood warriors, a handful of drell mixed in with seventy-odd humans, all of them displaying eager pride. "You are the vanguard of our protection, the fist that holds aloft the beacon of civilization and knowledge, the wall that stands between the monsters in the dark and the peaceful civilians of your homeworlds."

_Damn, she's a lot more martial-sounding than my own graduation_, Shepard thought to herself. _I knew tensions were heating up along the borders of the Terminus and Dead Zone, but she's talking like we're about to go to war in an hour or two._ Her train of thought was broken as the MC shouted, "Graduates, dismissed!" and the crowd erupted into cheering. She started applauding for all she was worth, even though she didn't know anyone in this batch of candidates. It didn't matter; now they were her compatriots in N7, the elite of the Alliance military.

"Pretty impressive, isn't it?" a voice said from just behind her shoulder, causing her to whirl around in surprise. "I'm glad I got away long enough to at least catch the end of the ceremony."

She grabbed him in a hug. "Eric, you punk! How many times have you been told to stop sneaking up on me?" she demanded of her older brother, Captain Eric Shepard, also N7.

"Since you were three? Hmm, I dunno," he teased, putting a finger to his mouth as he pretended to think. "You can't take three from two, two is less than three, so you look at the four in the eights place … no more than three or four thousand." He grinned unrepentantly as she punched him playfully in the shoulder. "Actually, I'm here partly on business," he said. "Want to catch lunch somewhere secure, and I can give you purposefully vague hints about your new orders?"

"Sure," she said, linking one arm with his and striding down the stairs and across the field, both of them shaking as many hands (or handling appendages) as they could on their way. "It'll give me plenty of time to needle you about what new hobby you're taking up on your enforced downtime."

"Spirits save me from siblings," they chorused, laughing as they joined the pedestrian throng in Aldrin Park, heading for a restaurant near training command HQ where an enlistee, let alone a civilian, was so far out of place to feel the judgmental stares aimed in their direction. Their conversation along the way was kept to light subjects, like new music and entertainment and the conclusion of the three hundredth annual Shandrakor Death Race, in which a forty-year high for "Number of People Eaten By Indigenous Wildlife" had been set.

At the restaurant, they both gave smiles and waves to a few officers they recognized, waiting ten minutes to get a booth near the back of the restaurant. As they slid inside, Eric pulled out a small privacy field generator. "This must be unusually serious," Teri said, now concerned.

"A little bit, yeah. I know most of your past assignments have been in the Dead Zone," he said quietly, referring to the patch of space inhabited by the species of the last cycle, and the Citadel with its locked-out relay. "Have you been paying attention to what's going on in the Terminus?"

She shook her head, tapping out a food order on the wall pad. "Not really. Like you said, I've been on the other side of the galaxy. Most of my time has been keeping the yahg away from dead planets, derelict stations, and the like."

He shook his head. "It's pretty bad. As much as I'd rather be out in the field, not on three years of desk time, the stuff I'm organizing in the reports is bad. Really bad." He shuddered, and they sat in silence for several moments. "You're going to be assigned to Captain Moon."

Teri's eyes went wide. She'd heard of Captain Tobias Moon; the man was one of the most famous N7s alive, and the most heavily augmented human in the Alliance. It had started with one arm, ripped off whole from the shoulder by a yahg, who he then killed with his shovel before his team could reach him and stabilize the injury. Over his twenty years of service, the augmentation had been followed by his other hand, both legs from the knees down, an eye, and various voluntary enhancements to allow better functioning as a whole.

"He's taking a team of a dozen N7s, including three of the new graduates. Four of the team are brood warriors." Eric paused as a waiter approached, setting down her fried rice and his MLT. Once they were clear, he continued through a bite of his sandwich. "Lieutenant Commander Benson is also supposed to be on the team." Amber Benson was infamous as the "Cleanser of the Idirod," after killing every man and woman on the pirate asteroid in the Terminus, many of them by being deliberately spaced alive.

"What the hell are we supposed to be facing out there?" she whispered, setting down her spoon, appetite vanished.

"You know how there's been a couple of colonies started out in the Terminus? People who don't want to be under Alliance protection, for whatever reason?" Teri nodded wordlessly, sipping at her glass of water as he continued. "Six of them have utterly vanished in as many months. Around four hundred thousand people total, vanished without an alert or a shot fired. The whole colony sitting there, buildings untouched, machinery still running, food left out on the table half-eaten." He set down his sandwich. "You, sis, have been ordered to report to Admiral Anderson tomorrow at zero-seven-hundred. That's when you get to meet the group officially and get the full brief."

"How the hell did the yahg manage to take out six colonies without any resistance?" she said, brow creased in a frown. "For that matter, if they had a weapon like that, why haven't they gone after a major colony, or one of our stations like Prime?"

"If we knew that, we wouldn't be sending you," he said, picking his sandwich back up. "There's rumors, but nothing more specific, that a new ship, from a new species, has been seen at Omega station. It's _possible_," though his tone of voice sufficiently stressed his doubts, "that they, and not the yahg, are behind this."

She raised an eyebrow at that, and he shrugged. "Hey, some people are desperate to find another bogeyman, because they don't want to face the possibility that the yahg might have just upped their game. Finding out they ripped off our warp drive, even if it is two iterations behind, was bad enough."

"You really know how to brighten my day," Teri complained, finally going back to her food. "Oh, and you're paying for this," she mumbled around a mouthful. Eric just laughed, but at least he covered his mouth to avoid spraying her with bread crumbs.

* * *

_May 26, 2905, Alliance Training Facility HQ, Armstrong Colony_

When her wristcomp beeped 0700, Commander Shepard was sitting in a chair in a meeting room. Six other humans were there, as well as four brood warriors and a drell – the task force her brother had mentioned. Almost all of them were strangers to her, but she knew a few by reputation.

Captain Tobias Moon sat ramrod straight in the chair, his bald scalp gleaming faintly under the lights. His skin was the mixed-ancestry-tan of half the Alliance, a slightly darker shade than her own, but his turquoise eyes seemed flat and tired. Like all N7, he had spent the last three years in a "cooling off" job to prevent burnout. She guessed that he had picked the three new graduates, after reviewing their files as he ran security clearances and monitored candidate trials from afar.

Lieutenant Commander Amber Benson, in contrast, was slouched down in her chair, tapping her fingers against the tabletop irritably. Outside of her infamous Idirod mission, Shepard knew next to nothing about her, but the straight, honey-brown hair left the impression that Benson had irritably hacked off chunks of it with a pair of scissors to make it fit in her helmet.

To her surprise, she also recognized one of the brood warriors, Dreams-of-Rippling-Water. The Singer had a series of concentric overlapping brown/green circles running down his back, and had served aboard her first ship, before she had gone through even N1 training. Sensing her attention, he gave a slight bob of his handling appendage, the Singer equivalent of a wave. _You have grown much, tiny Shepard,_ his voice sang in her head.

_I think you're about the same size,_ she replied back with a smile. The three new graduates exchanged glances, the human and drell obviously communing with the new Singer. She could sense them talking, even if she wasn't able to overhear what they said.

The door opened suddenly as Admiral Anderson strode inside. "Glad to see you're all here," he said, running one hand through his short-cropped gray hair as he tossed his cover onto the table near the last empty seat at the head of the table. "You're all N7, so you know the importance of a mission that requires putting twelve of you together for it, and how to keep this out of the press."

Sitting down, he tapped at his own wristcomp, bringing up a display on the other side of the room. "In the last three years, there's been increasing pirate activity in the Terminus systems, prompted by the yahg. What started with ships being taken, and the crews vanishing, has been steadily increasing, despite the harsh lessons dealt at Idirod." He glanced over at Benson, who smirked. "Ten months ago, it graduated from ships to entire colonies."

The display flicked to a composite display, showing deserted buildings, personal devices left abandoned, food half eaten. _Just like Eric said, only he thought it was just the last six months_, she thought numbly. "Eight colonies that we know of have been taken. Seven of those were out in the depths of the Terminus. Nineteen hours ago, the colony of Teardrop went silent." The screen switched to a galaxy view. The Alliance was a semi-circle of blue territory centered on the Orion arm, at the six o'clock position, while the yahg was a smaller circle, the edge just barely touching the outer edge of the galaxy at one o'clock. The Terminus encompassed most of the space between them between two and four-thirty, while the Dead Zone covered everything from seven-thirty to ten, with a small area of unclaimed/unexplored territory around the eleven to twelve position. Teardrop was right on the edge of Alliance space, the independent colony debating joining the Alliance for the last six months.

"Most of the missing colonies had relatively small populations. Totaled together, the first seven don't even reach half a million people. Teardrop, however, had a population of thirty-two million." Everyone in the room sucked in harsh breaths, the lone drell bowing his head in a prayer. "Alliance ships are already scanning the planet. So far, we've located three small groups of survivors, totaling fifty-seven people. All of them were far from any population center, all of them using minimal technology."

Anderson's face was grave as he met the eyes of every one of them, including the Singers, his own turquoise eyes bright with anger. "Aside from picking up the survivors for questioning, we have not landed troops anywhere on the planet. Captain Moon, you will be taking command of the stealth frigate _Hades_ at fifteen-hundred hours today. You will be taking your team here, along with two squads of marines for auxiliary support. Find out what the hell happened to our colonies. If it's the yahg, I want to know how they did it. If it's not the yahg, I want to know who, and where. These colonists might have been living in the Terminus, but that doesn't mean they're not our people."

"Sir, is there any indication that the rumors of a new species in the Terminus is true?" the new human piped up.

"You're Singh, right? Xenoscience?" He nodded to Anderson's questions. "So far, nothing. Beyond rumors of the Haze takeover of Omega due to an undisclosed weapons provider, that is." The admiral shook his head. "Alliance Intelligence already has secured a few of those weapons, and they are advanced. But it's possible they landed a cache of technology left over from the last cycle, or the one before that. The Protheans were supposed to have been building their own mass relays, and those weapons share similarities in design."

"How could a new alien species go around undetected, anyway?" Benson scoffed.

"Easily, actually. Our estimates show we've explored only around thirty percent of the relays in our galaxy." Moon's voice was flat and unemotional as he laid out the facts. "Combine that with a minimum distance of a thousand light years between them, and that leaves a hell of a lot of space in the galaxy unaccounted for. According to that VI, even the Protheans hadn't explored every single relay in the galaxy. For some reason, relays do tend to be placed close to clusters of garden planets, but it's possible for a race that evolved up to space travel between relays to have come up with an FTL method like warp drive, or possibly something more exotic, and never touched mass effect tech." His artificial eye glowed slightly as he fixed Benson with a stare. "People forget that between systems is a whole lot of empty fucking space. Aside from exploratory cutters, we tend to stick to our well-marked travel lanes."

"Sorry I asked," she muttered, slouching back down in her chair.

"Commander Shepard, you'll be Moon's XO," Anderson continued, as though the interruption had never happened. "Ripples will be in charge of the Singers aboard. We've assigned an extra batch of workers for damage control."

_We appreciate your concern, and hope fixing-songs will not need to be sung,_ Ripples replied. _If the missing cannot be retrieved, do we sing vengeance hymns, and pound the drumbeats of war?_

"That depends on who's behind it, and whether or not we can stop it," Anderson answered. "If they can waltz off with thirty million people in the six hours it took us to notice transmissions cut off and get a cruiser there, then what could they do if they struck somewhere like Ulysses Peak, Torrent, or god forbid, Shandrakor or Earth? There's a hundred billion humans in the Alliance, and then add another billion drell and ten billion Singer queens and brood warriors."

"On the upside," Shepard said slowly, thinking it over as she spoke, "they don't have any actual Singers, right? No queens have settled outside the Alliance."

_There was debate among the queens to who would be the first to settle on Teardrop, should it join,_ one of the other brood warriors said. For a moment, she wished they had started the meeting off with introductions, but apparently Anderson and Moon already knew who all of them were. _None had yet set forth. However, there could still have been more egg-ships in the void. Even our first reborn queen did not know how many like her drifted in the sea between stars, and the Alliance has found only two more._

"That's a sobering thought," Moon added. "But the data doesn't indicate that yet. The first four ship abductions, as well as the first colony abductions, were the so-called Pure Humanity separatists. Only after they vanished did the focus stop being on unaltered humans." Less than ten percent of humans lacked the minor Singer DNA additions, giving them the turquoise eyes and better communication with the Singers. "They've also focused on ships containing groups of people with other voluntary gene mods, such as heavy-g bones."

"Your team is being given far more leeway than most N7 ops," Anderson said, obviously trying to conclude his part in the meeting. "Start with investigating the planet. Comm satellites were blocked, and none of the planetside quantum comms were active at the time of the attack. Let us know what you find, and follow that evidence wherever it takes you. Understood?"

"Of course, Admiral," Moon responded. Both of them rose from their chairs to exchange a quick handshake. Once he was gone, Moon walked up to the front of the room. "Everyone here knows me. I think all of you know Shepard, the hero of Skyllian Five, and Benson, the Cleanser of Idirod. We're all N7, we're all used to being the hotshot leading the grunts around by the nose. I'm willing to extend a lot of latitude on this mission, but ultimately, this is _my_ mission and you will follow _my_ orders. Is that clear?" His voice hardly strayed from the monotone the whole time he spoke, but the emphasis on the last few words was clearly meant for Benson and one of the brood warriors she didn't know.

"Now, introductions. Lieutenant Singh, Xenoscience, specializing in xenobacteria. Also squad medic, should the need arise." Singh raised a hand cheerfully, his own head covered in short black hair of his mostly-Indian ancestry.

"Lieutenant Porridge, high-energy physics, and heavy weapons." The squat woman grinned, her blond hair dyed at the tips the same color as her eyes.

"Major Taryn, infiltration and sniping." The drell inclined his head respectfully, his scales a dark pattern of green and gold. _If I was into drell, he'd be smoking hot_, Teri thought. _How the hell does he hide with that eye-catching pattern?_

"Lieutenant Arak, communications. She also speaks fluent yahg, as well as non-VI assisted drell trade-tongue." The faintly Asian woman nodded, redoing her braid as she scanned the room.

"Lieutenant Smith, chemistry and demolitions, also supporting Porridge for heavy weapons." Like Moon, his head was bald, though probably by choice, rather than a side effect of implants in the skull.

"Dreams-Of-Rippling-Water, senior brood warrior. Most of you probably heard of his own efforts on Allustray." The Singer waved his appendages, filling their minds with a quiet major chord.

"Watches-The-Stars-Dance, the newest graduate. Stardancer for short." He was the one who had spoken up earlier, and his carapace shimmered with swirls in ultra-violet.

"Sings-To-Lost-Memories, formerly one of the trainers. Memorysong for short." This brood warrior was tinted more towards a red-brown, almost dark enough to be a rich burgundy – or the color of dried human blood. Like Ripples, his N7 designation had been carefully etched into his carapace by a worker.

"Dances-In-Thunderstorms, coming off Ascension security detail." They all knew what that meant – he had been personally guarding one of the queens, or maybe a major Senator. "Thunder, for short." Unlike the others, his N7 was actually part of the coloring on his carapace, the black and red complementing his earth-tones.

"How the heck did you get it into the color of your shell?" Shepard couldn't help but ask.

_Painfully_, was his succinct reply.

"It's now 0749," Moon said simply. "1400, I want us all on board for a walkthrough of the ship. The _Hades_ is only two years old, so there shouldn't be any problems aside from crowding. We take command at 1500," he said, gesturing to Shepard, "and I want us launched by 1510. The longer we wait, the more evidence we lose. Aside from myself, only Ripples and Singh have any investigative experience, so follow our lead when we get planetside. Anything you think you'll need, get it in the next six hours, because I don't expect we'll be back to Alliance space for a while. Dismissed."

They broke up quickly, filing out of the building into the passages of the lunar colony. If she was careful, she'd have enough time to stock up her personal supply of drink flavoring – the taste the suit filters left behind always left her feeling like she'd swallowed a dead cat. "Hey, Singh," she said as she noticed they were walking the same direction. "How'd you get into xenoscience?"

"Oh, heh," he said, blushing faintly. "Remember about twenty years back, when they found evidence of those little furry guys in the stone age?"

It took her a minute to place it. "The ones we nicknamed Ewoks?"

"Yeah. I saw a report on them, and then started looking up all the other species we've found that appear intelligent but not up to space travel yet. Did you know we've charted seventeen species already?" He was obviously eager about the subject; she guessed most people just blew him off.

"I didn't know it was that many," she said, faintly surprised. "The most advanced one is, what, iron age?"

"Building steam engines, actually," he said. "Anyway, that's what got me interested in it. None of those species has been contacted yet. You know, trying not to damage their development, no uplifting of other civilizations, etc. But all of the official first contacts are going to be made by N7 personnel. It might not happen in my lifetime, but just in case?" His eyes gleamed with excitement. "Nothing was going to stop me from being there short of death." He glanced at her as they ducked down a stairwell towards the nearest shopping district. "So, you're really the daughter of _that_ Commander Shepard?"

"Yep." She didn't need to elaborate. A yahg patrol had caught her father, a fairly average N7 operative, alone and isolated from his squad. Then they captured him, despite losing two of their own, and brought him back to their base, where they ate him alive while he screamed epithets and vengeance. Then they made the mistake of broadcasting the video they made of their sport at the marine detachment Shepard had been leading, starting one of the most vicious skirmishes the centuries-long conflict had seen, a month of fighting that ended in the orbital bombardment of a yahg surveillance facility.

"Well, damn. Moon, Benson, and a Shepard. Whoever's behind this doesn't know what's coming for them." He nodded respectfully to her before turning down a side street.

* * *

_May 26, 2905, Parnack, High Chief's Palace_

The leader of the Yahg Imperium brooded on his throne. All three of his top advisors sat on their own chairs at his feet, waiting. "How many have we lost?" he finally asked.

Krak, Advisor of Science and Technology, fought the urge to shift in her seat. "Altogether, this enemy has taken one hundred forty thousand warriors, one hundred ninety thousand worker males, and sixty thousand females." They all quailed as Dorak, High Chief, hurled his goblet the full hundred meters of his meeting hall.

"Sixty thousand females, three hundred thousand males, and you tell me you have nothing that says what happened to them?" he roared, whirling on Pazaran, Military Advisor. "Hardly a shot fired! What are your warriors doing when this enemy comes for them?"

"Lord, if I knew, I would be at their door personally," he swore. "We do not know how they are taken, nor why. Food is left half-eaten, work unfinished. Automatic systems record no ships, yahg or Alliance, landing on the planet." Whatever else he would have said was cut off as Dorak seized him by the throat, muscles rippling as he lifted the twelve-foot advisor off the floor.

"I don't want to hear excuses. I want all three of you," he snarled, fixing the other two with a pair of eyes each, "to pick your three best people. Give them a starship. Tell them to find out what happened to my damned colony. Tell them to find out what happened to my damned _third concubine_, or six months from now, I'll have their heads and yours nailed atop the palace wall for incompetence."

Pazaran was hurled to the floor, though at least he only flew a dozen meters, and all three of them hustled from the room. "I will have my three best here by dawn tomorrow," he croaked, massaging his throat with one hand.

"Likewise," Krak murmured softly.

"Where do we send them first?" Makrek, Advisor of Food and Logistics muttered darkly. "We've all had teams search the whole planet Youreg top to bottom. No one remains, not even the slave-foods." He shook his head. "This is a fool's task."

"I have no desire to see my head adorning the wall," Krak said fervently. "Being female would not save me from such a fate. None of us are strong enough to take Dorak's place, nor could we work peacefully together." It was a statement of their physiology; there _must_ be a ruler, or the entire system would halt as the strongest and smartest among them warred for the title.

"I've already stepped up patrols of similar colonies," Pazaren said. "Until then, we send our best into the Terminus systems to look for a cause. Otherwise, six months from now, we have something that will blame the Alliance, whether they did it or not."

"May your words become meat," Makrek uttered fervently.

* * *

_**Codex Entry: Alliance Politics**_

The Alliance is technically set up as a representative democratic republic, in a similar fashion to the Earth nations of England or the United States. Each planet gets a certain number of representatives to the House of Commons based upon population, and a fixed number to the House of Senators. As of the 2900 Senate, the Commons holds one thousand members, and the Senate holds 510 (three for each accepted planet in the Alliance). Commoners are elected from their districts for three year terms, limited to a maximum of seven terms, while Senators are elected for six year terms, limited to a maximum of four terms. With most humans living to a century or so, these limits help prevent a single politician from monopolizing a position as their only career.

The Prime Minister position is, like the old British system, filled by special elections when a simple majority decides he or she is not properly fulfilling their duties as the head of the government. A Senator must have served a full term before they can be nominated, but it is extremely uncommon to have a PM who serves for less than two years.

Off Earth, most colonies have fairly high rates of voter participation, especially among the newest worlds. Singer queens and brood warriors have voting rights as citizens, and several have even been elected to the Commons or Senate (mostly from Shandrakor, where 57% of the voting citizens are Singers). The first drell politicians were quickly elected in 2620 after their full entrance into the Alliance was finalized, and their eidetic memories have given them a slightly higher representation than strict demographics would suggest.

The chambers for the House of Commons and Senate are a specially constructed adjunct to Ascension Station, designed to house the fifteen hundred politicians, their estimated seven thousand aides and interns, and a security staff of five thousand. When both houses are in session, a full visitor balcony and press box will swell the adjunct population to nearly twenty thousand people, though that level of participation has rarely been seen since the nearly-unanimous vote to accept Rakhana into the Alliance. With another seven expected to reach the required population and tax income levels to upgrade from 'colony' to 'member world' within the next twenty years, plans are in place to expand the chambers again.


	5. Ch2: Training en route

_Author's Note: Every week, I continue to be amazed at how much everyone is enjoying this story. I put it up on the 27th of May; on the 27th of June, it was the #36 most followed and #88 most favorited story in the Mass Effect section. So thank you to everyone, and I hope you continue to enjoy it!_

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"I have command of the ship," Captain Moon said officially, his monotone echoing off the bulkheads of the drydock chamber in Darkside Three. He returned the salute of Commander Neuser, who smartly turned away and strode out of the bay. The _Hades_ was a looming black bulk behind Moon, her curves shimmering into iridescence where the lights reflected. "Everyone here knows who I am." It wasn't a question, but heads nodded throughout the ranks. "You're some of the finest in the Alliance fleet. Today, we are heading out into the Terminus to show exactly what that means.

"We will be under a communications blackout, aside from top-secret messages. I'm sure all of you are wondering why. Less than two days ago, the entire population of Teardrop was taken from their homes. No weapons were fired, no warning was sent, no help was requested. Now, over thirty million people who wanted to be Alliance citizens are gone. Our enemies, whether the yahg or a new species, think they've left no trace for us to follow." Moon's synthetic eye glowed brightly, his organic one almost as bright.

"We're going to Teardrop. We're going to find out what happened to them. And we will teach them what happens when you decide to fuck with the Alliance!" His voice thrummed with emotion for the first time. The one hundred thirty human and drell members of the crew shouted their agreement, the Singer workers overlaying it all with a mental wave of red and gray in a trumpet fanfare. Moon gave them a moment, then raised one hand, and the crew almost instantly silenced, snapping proudly back to attention. "All crew, to your stations. I want us leaving this berth in the next ten minutes."

"Crew, dismissed!" Shepard shouted, as Moon turned away. In an instant, the orderly ranks shattered into a swirling maelstrom as everyone rushed up the cargo ramps or through the airlocks to get to their stations. The two officers watched them go, falling in at the rear of the group. All the rest of the N7s were already on board, most of them resting. Teardrop was three days travel past the relay, nearly halfway to the next known relay out in the Terminus, but they had already set up training and sparring sessions to keep everyone sharp.

"Do you actually think we'll find anything?" she asked when they were alone in the airlock.

Moon's eyes were cold as he glanced at her. "Without a doubt, there is something to find. The question is, can twelve of us cover two major cities, twelve smaller cities, and three major agricultural centers, and do so in enough time to make a difference." His lips twitched in what was almost a smile. "Short of taking every trained investigator in North America and dropping them on the planet, I think we are the best chance. Singh and I will be teasing the basics of how to gather evidence at twenty hundred."

"I'll be there," she promised, splitting off to drop down the narrow ladder into the engineering deck. She always enjoyed the technical parts of the job, and on a small ship like this, the Engineering Chief was often more important than the XO. The man would be running the ship while she and Moon were planetside, so swinging by to get his measure was part of her job, as well as a good idea.

The small mess deck was deserted, save for two junior personnel, double-checking the various cabinets in the kitchen area. The medical bay was just past it, two doctors and two enlisted corpsmen already finishing their inventory, snapping to attention before she could wave them down. Then she was through the airtight door and into main engineering.

The drive core was a pulsating ball of eezo almost as tall as she was, generating the gravity fields on the decks and maintaining the inertial shields. The warp drive behind it was a grim silver cylinder, locked behind panels of plasteel, the fusion reaction carefully contained to provide power to the rest of the ship, starting with the reality-bending FTL effect. She glanced around, looking for the Chief Engineer, not seeing him.

"Commander, I didn't expect to see you quite so soon," said a husky voice from behind her, and Shepard turned in surprise. "Lieutenant Commander Taylor, at your service," she said, holding out a hand. Surprised, Teri shook hands. "Expected a guy, huh?" Destin Taylor asked calmly. "Don't worry, I'm used to it. Just swing by to meet me, or did you have more of an agenda?"

"Mostly a meet and greet. I only found out I'd be your new XO eight hours ago," Teri said, walking beside Destin as they walked to the main drive monitoring console, looking over the shoulder of the petty officer seated there. "I haven't had a chance to do more than glance at the names of the crew. You've been on board since the _Hades_ launched, right?"

"Reported two months before launch, right out of the Darkside Five yards. _Hades_ is a good ship, especially compared to a River-class heavy cruiser. He's fast, quiet, and sensitive," Taylor expounded, looking at the eezo core. "Only downside is we're kind of lightly armed. Four turret-mounted Hellbore cannons for point defense, two railguns." She pointed above her head at the weapons as they continued their circuit of engineering. "Four missile tubes. Compared to a regular cutter, we're running barely two-thirds the weapons they are, but that's why we have the stealth shielding."

The shielding was why the cutter looked black to the naked eye. It was actually several layers of specialized chitin, applied in layers only a few molecules thick, before being topped by carbon nanotubes, laboriously created by Singer workers. In terms of materials, it was fairly cheap, but making the layer for an eighty meter long cutter took hundreds of workers months. Stealthing a heavy cruiser would take close to two years, and as for a dreadnaught, well, that would likely be impossible.

"I admit, I haven't seen the mission reports, so how well does the shielding actually work?" Teri asked.

"Actually, pretty good. We spent the last year after our shakedown cruise patrolling into the Traverse. We can get almost close enough to knock if we're not near a planet." Destin shrugged easily. "Get too close to a planet, though, there's just too many eyes everywhere, not to mention adding in reflected sunlight and heat. That's enough for them to get a clue."

Teri looked up, her eyes tracing the lines of the railguns. "I suppose it's too much to hope for that we can fire while stealthed?"

Destin laughed. "Actually, that's not a problem. Railguns are pretty minimal, and we can start the missiles moving with a shove instead of lighting the engines instantly."

"Thus hiding our position. I like it," Shepard said. "Alright, I'll let you get to work here, since the pitch of the drives says we've lifted off already. Expect to be in some of our briefs. You'll be running the ship when both Moon and I are planetside anywhere."

"Aye aye, Commander," Taylor called as Shepard departed.

Teri briefly considered checking out the main battery, where all the guns were controlled, but decided to skip it and head up to the bridge. She couldn't leave Moon there alone all afternoon. Being a smaller ship, there were no elevators, just plenty of narrow stairs and emergency ladders. "At least I'll get my workouts done," she muttered to herself as she climbed up two decks to the bridge.

The bridge itself seemed tiny at first. It had a shape sort of like a dumbbell. One side had the main holographic display, where Moon stood now, as well as the main stations for communications and weapons. A narrow, strait passageway threaded between the dorsal Hellbores to the stations for the pilot, navigation, and sensors. Her chair folded down from the wall behind the holostation, so she pulled it down and slid in next to Moon.

Currently, he was looking over basic statistics for the planet, basic facts pulled from the extranet. The planet was colder than Earth's average, comparable to geologic records from the last ice age. The main bastions of civilization were a pair of cities on the same continent, just slightly north of the equator. Riptide was the smaller, housing a mere four million people on a tranquil and relatively warm bay that faced the equatorial currents. The capitol, Bigfoot, had somewhere around ten million people, all crammed into a glacier-carved canyon twenty kilometers long that did kind of look like a foot, if you tilted your head and squinted funny.

"Obviously, we need to split up," Moon said without preamble, not even glancing her direction in acknowledgement. "While I would like someone investigative trained to lead up each team, that makes only three teams of four. Hardly a wise use of our manpower."

She considered it as she studied the hologram. All of the smaller cities, ranging from a million down to just fifty thousand, were just brilliant points of yellow against the mostly gray-white background. "Check the crew backgrounds," she said, thinking of Taylor. "We, or at least I, haven't had time to do more than glance at a list of names and responsibilities. We should have at least three Military Police on board, they're supposed to get at least the basics. Plus there's people who take classes just for the heck of it." Moon finally looked up at her, blinking owlishly.

"That's a good suggestion. Even I'm used to it being me leading around a squad or two." He glanced over the controls, finally picking out the intercom button. "Master Chief Gwynn to the bridge." He glanced back at the display. "We should hit these two planetary defense bases; even if they don't tell us who, we should be able to discover how. I'll take this one," he pointed at the base outside of Riptide, "and I'm going to have Ripples check the orbital platform."

Before he could say more, Gwynn stepped inside, one of the darkest men Shepard had ever seen. Surprisingly, he was also an au natural human, brown irises vivid against the white background. "You called, Captain?" he said quietly, stepping over to the hologram.

"I need to know by zero seven tomorrow how many people on the crew have experience and training at investigating crime scenes," Moon ordered, pointing at the planetary image. "For the moment, I have to treat the whole planet as a crime scene, but not all N7 have experience doing double duty as detectives. I have too many places to search, and not enough people to do it."

"All three of our MPs have training, of course, but I think they're all light on experience. I'll get the crew polled to see who's had any kind of training," Gwynn said. "Anything else, sir?"

Moon was silent for several seconds, finally shaking his head. "No, that'll be all. We will be borrowing the mess decks for training on investigative techniques, so have the MPs join us." Gwynn nodded and left the bridge, the door almost silent. "Do you have any preference on where you want to explore?"

She considered the planet, setting the display to rotate, glancing at the data of the various smaller cities and towns as they crossed her view. "Here," she said suddenly, pausing it on a small town, barely ten thousand people large, in one of the main agricultural districts. Moon raised an eyebrow inquiringly, so she elaborated. "Rosewood's small enough we should be able to at least walk through the town in a day, which will give us a feel for the area, but large enough these invaders might have slipped up and missed something. If I'm wrong, and we don't find anything in a couple of days, we can move to wherever you feel is best."

He stared at her with his flat gaze, artificial eye glinting dully, long enough that she started to grow nervous. "Good call. Did you also pick it because it's where one of the survivors was from?" he finally asked, watching the surprise bloom on her face. "Obviously not. Make sure you take time to read the report from their interrogation. All of the survivors are still on board the _Rhine_, in case you have more questions."

"I'm assuming all the teams are going to the hometowns of the other survivors?" she asked, already marking the interview notes as high priority on her omni.

"In a matter of speaking. Twelve of them were on leave from Fort Rip, doing some kind of dumb macho Marine survival exercise in their free time." He raised an eyebrow as she tried to stifle her snicker. "Yes, I was one of those Marines. These idiots didn't even bring a communicator when the nearest human except them were a hundred kilometers away." His fingers twitched at the controls, lighting up two other smaller cities. "There was a religious group from Icestorm, on some retreat to 'find the soul of the planet' or some nonsense like that. Then a Spacer Scout troop from Yetitown. Buncha kids, only a couple of adults."

"So, how are you going to split things up?" she asked curiously. She wasn't idolizing Moon, she told herself sternly, just trying to learn everything she could from a man who'd been an N7 almost as long as she'd been in the Alliance.

"We'll see how things go with the training tonight. Smith was in scouts, so I'll let him deal with them, and who goes with him will depend on how fast everyone is picking up investigation work. I do intend our last session to be a set of mock crime scenes, Singh and Ripples will set them up and I'll monitor." He turned off the hologram abruptly and stood up. "In the meantime, I'm going to my cabin to unpack my things and go over the mission reports again. You have the bridge."

Shepard tried not to feel hurt as he walked out without another glance. She knew some of his implants were in his brain, hardly unusual for the Alliance, when most N7s had an emergency transponder implanted in their head. Even most companies employed people who voluntarily had data banks and analysis computers wired into their gray matter. She couldn't help thinking that one of those implants must have had some kind of side effect that stopped him from expressing his emotions properly.

The ship was running perfectly fine on its own, so after a few minutes of skimming the daily reports, she pulled up the interrogation transcripts, setting her VI to silent. She'd listen to his voice and watch his facial expressions on the second go around.

The next two days passed, feeling faster than they had a right to. Four class sessions with Moon, Singh, and Ripples teaching them not simply what to look for, but _how_ to look. To her surprise, a great deal of it was things covered in N training. Sizing up a room or a field, looking for defensible positions – because the colonists would have sought them if they could. Looking for physical signs of electronic intrusion – the invaders might use similar ECM tactics as Alliance troops or yahg. Scanning for ordinary items out of place – quite similar to scanning for ambushes, mines, and other guerilla tactics.

The rest of them stood in the corridor next to the medical bay, waiting. Ripples and Singh were setting up the mess hall for this exercise, placing and removing items that they wanted to be noticed. Shepard looked around at her fellow N7s. "Anyone else feeling out of their depth?" she asked, trying to break the tension.

Arak laughed, her voice tight. "A little bit. I intend to focus my eyes on the communication equipment, since that's already my specialty. I grew up mostly shipboard, I won't be able to tell what's out of place in a farming community."

Thunder dipped his handling appendages in agreement. _We Singers have better UV sensitivity than you, but you see better details. We will be smelling more than looking. It may give us an advantage in this test. In the field, the song is less certain._

Benson snorted in disgust. "Let's get this over with, so the people with actual training can find us a lead. Then we can track them down and rip their spines out through their noses."

The door opened suddenly, and Moon was standing there. Only at that moment did it occur to Shepard that he had probably planted a listening device in the corridor. She glanced around quickly, hardly moving her head as her omni-tool's VI focused the scanning beam where her gaze fell. Right as Moon opened his mouth, it beeped, a tiny orange laser pointing out the grain-sized bug stuck against the top corner of the med bay door.

"Well, at least one of you caught on, albeit slower than I'd like," Moon said, stepping over and pulling down the bug. "We'll go in groups of three. First group will be Shepard, Stardancer, and Taryn. Then Benson, Smith, and Thunder. Last group is Porridge, Arak, and Memorysong." He stepped back inside the room, holding the door for the three of them to enter. "The rest of you can retire to quarters for the time being. The ship VI will notify you when to return."

Shepard took one long look around the room, then reached out to grab Taryn's shoulder as he started to step away. "There's two ways we can do this. First, we each take a section of the room, or second, we each scan the whole room for specific things." She looked at them both, Taryn's nearly black eyes wholly unreadable to her. "I have the most technical training in our group, so I was going to look for ECM, bugs, and the like. Stardancer's strong point is going to be smells and ground disturbances, obviously."

The drell nodded, following her train of thought. "While I focus on what could have been defensible positions and lines of attack for both sides. I agree." With that said, they started a careful circuit of the room, marking various items out for continued study.

An hour later, Shepard had found three bugs of varying types, evidence of someone hard-wiring themselves into the 'security network' (actually a spare engineering panel pulled out of storage). Taryn had found three spots where attackers could have struck, and Stardancer believed the colonists had been incapacitated with chemical weapons. They left the mess hall, climbing up to the second deck and into the room where Singh and Ripples waited. "That was pretty good, overall," Singh told them when they arrived. "Shepard, you missed that one of the memory modules was missing from the panel." She frowned as he held up the module in question.

"Obviously, we cannot expect our adversaries to be using the equipment we are familiar with on Alliance vessels," Taryn said calmly, sitting down and folding his hands in his lap.

"No, but just knowing something is out of place is a good way to start. From the way you performed, I'm going to put Shepard and Stardancer with Chief Deet. He's the head of the MPs on board," Singh explained. "He's had a little investigative experience, mostly limited to searching out contraband, but he's still been through training courses. Taryn, you'll be with me, and either Thunder or Memorysong, checking out Fort Polish." The drell nodded respectfully.

"Alright, we'll be there in what, twelve hours?" Shepard asked rhetorically, checking her omni. "I'll be up on the bridge for the next two hours, if anyone needs me." She stepped around the two Singers, catching the fringes of their conversation on what to properly smell for, and headed up to the bridge.

She'd watched the interrogation video of Ryan Jacoby, professional stylist of Rosewood, three times. The guy had been on a camping trip with his girlfriend who lived in Riptide. She'd read all the transcripts of the interrogations. Glancing around, she tapped the intercom. "Chief Deet to the bridge."

When he arrived, she had up a map of the community of Rosewood. Numerous small stores on the crossroads of four major streets, with smaller lanes filled with small homes. The outer edge of the settlement was ringed with barns, silos, and processing facilities to prepare food to be shipped off world. Almost ten miles in every direction were fields and orchards, filled with crops just barely planted. This small town supplied a tenth of the food to Bigfoot – and now, would it rot in the fields, or would the Alliance bring in people, temporarily or permanently, to ensure that food continued to flow offworld? "You called, Commander?"

She looked up to see a man she could only think of as 'spindly'. He was nearly seven feet tall, and probably had a waist smaller than hers. "Chief Deet, yes. Have you been briefed on your part in our mission?"

He nodded, his probably perfectly regulation buzz cut just barely missing the light above his head. "Yes, ma'am. I will be accompanying a pair of N7 down to the surface to assist in investigating the abduction of the colonists. I assume I'm going with you, since you called me."

She gestured him to the VIP seat next to her, and he folded himself into it, reminding her of when her father came to her school when she was five for a parent meeting, trying to sit in a chair designed for someone half his size. "Yes. We're going to check out this community, Rosewood. If we discount the fields, the whole place barely covers five square miles."

Deet was already shaking his head. "Ma'am, that might not sound like much when you're scanning it from orbit, but covering that much ground on foot makes for a pretty big area."

"I know. I'd prefer to have us stick together, with each of us covering our areas of expertise." She highlighted a path through the town. "Obviously, they had some very sophisticated ECM capabilities – the grid didn't even show up as being compromised. I'll be checking that out, while you'll be looking for hiding spots, smuggling posts. Heck, even the local kid's clubhouse. It's unlikely that these invaders managed to incapacitate the entire population simultaneously, so someone might have tried to hide their family, their belongings, or grab their illegal weapons."

He nodded, already marking certain buildings as points of interest. "Places like these, public buildings? That's where electronic hubs are usually built. Also great places for sneaking contraband through." He scratched at one ear. "Who's our other team member, ma'am?"

"Stardancer, brood warrior. He'll be smelling for signs of the invaders. If they dropped something alien, he's more likely to find it than we are." She frowned as he highlighted one of the agriculture buildings on the outside of the town. "Why there?"

He raised an eyebrow. "Well, ma'am, according to the map, this is a dairy processing plant." She gave him a blank look. "For cows." Shepard waved one hand in a 'get on with it' gesture. "Ma'am, all the fields for ten miles of this place are food like corn, wheat, tomatoes, oranges, various nuts – there's no livestock farms of any kind. Why do they need a dairy plant?"

She stared at the map for several long seconds. "That is a very good question, chief," she finally said. With a few finger twitches, she rearranged their entire route through the town. "Let's start there. What do you expect to find?"

"I haven't been involved in busting drug labs, but I know we've had a couple cases where someone's set up processing labs on dreadnaughts for blood spray." Blood spray was an artificial stimulant, named for its propensity to cause nosebleeds after it was inhaled as a mist. It was mildly addictive to humans, and sent drell into memory-fugue for hours. "From what I understand, a lot of the equipment is similar to industrial processing of liquids."

"And being illegal in Alliance space, such a facility would doubtlessly have had significant defenses, both to keep away Alliance inspectors but also to deter pirates from seizing a payday." She nodded. "Good catch."

"If the machinery wasn't turned off, if it's still running like the rest of the planet? We'll need to be in full armor. The Singer, too." She frowned, and he hurried to elaborate. "I'm not sure if it affects a brood warrior the same as a worker, but it's an irritant to the workers. Causes them to molt, makes a hell of a mess."

"Alright, chief, you know more about this stuff than I do. We'll be in orbit in nine and a half hours, so be ready to drop. I don't know when we'll be hitting the ground, specifically. We only have two shuttles, and at least five or six groups of us to go planetside." Deet stood up, stowing the chair, and nodded politely before ducking through the door.

Shepard's gaze returned to the holographic projection, and then to her notes. Rosewood was a pretty small town. This Jacoby guy had to have known something about the blood spray plant. And he hadn't shared with the interrogators. With a predatory smile on her face, she typed out a message to the _Rhine_. Hopefully, by the time they landed, Ryan Jacoby could be … _encouraged_ to be a little more forthcoming.

**_Codex: Singer Hives_**

A typical Singer hive houses one queen, between ten and twenty brood warriors, up to a hundred warrior-supervisors, and anywhere from five hundred to two thousand workers. Each hive is counted as the specific property of the queen in residence, and too long of an absence by the queen can cause the other Singers to move to a new hive. Hives abandoned, either due to a queen leaving or dying, are normally appointed to a newly-birthed queen by the nearest neighbors of that empty hive.

Hives are normally formed completely underground, dug out by the workers and the warrior-supervisors. Hives are interconnected chambers and tunnels, all of them shaped and lined with thick coatings of resin produced by the workers. This resin can flex with tectonic activities, allowing hives to survive earthquakes as high as 6.5 Richter with absolutely no damage to the tunnels. A hive working in concert, led in biotic communion by the queen, can excavate enough cubic footage to equal ten two-bedroom apartments in under a day. Normally, hives cover an area of around one hundred meters in diameter and fifty to sixty meters tall, centered around the queen's chamber, and new hives are rarely excavated below another hive.

Most planets have hives underneath the more typical surface human and drell businesses and homes. Some planets, like Shandrakor and Earth, actually grant minor tax benefits to businesses that allow hives to be built under their facilities. Those businesses then typically hire workers for tasks such as business maintenance and janitorial duties, and warrior-supervisors for security. Hives grant their queens and brood warriors the same voting rights as the humans and drell living above them, though for practical reasons most municipalities send a voting representative to each hive rather than try to squeeze a Singer queen into a human-sized voting booth.


	6. Ch3: Clue Number One

_Author's Note: Wow, so I didn't think it would take me this long to get up another chapter. I have only myself to blame for going on vacation and not checking to make sure I packed my muse. This chapter is outstanding thanks to the amazing beta work of Palaven Blues with an assist from Full Paragon. I am so, __**so**__ thrilled to say that Ascension is now the #25 top followed Mass Effect fic! I love all your reviews, and hopefully the codex entry will answer many of your questions about the drell. I look forward to seeing everyone's reviews!_

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Shepard watched as the door closed. They were the last group on the shuttle, but it should only be a short ten minute hop to Rosewood, so she leaned back in her seat. Deet was dangled in the safety harness, head tilted sideways and mouth hanging open, but at least he wasn't drooling. Stardancer wiggled one handling appendage slightly as she glanced his way, a small mental wave of sky blue contentment laced with quiet violins of expectation.

She pulled up the latest interview footage again. Ryan Jacoby had been convinced the plant was just a regular dairy plant, supposedly processing from livestock plants in the foothills some thirty miles away. Except there was a dairy business much closer, with accessible records of health and safety inspections. It was possible he was right, and it was a regular plant. It was more probable that the plant was a drug operation and Mr. Jacoby didn't know anything about it.

The VI analysis gave a 97% likelihood he was telling the truth, and certainly the guy didn't seem to be the type to dissemble like a pro. Years of N7 training taught Teri that you never bet on the long shot. But by the same token, you didn't ignore it either, so she and Stardancer had made up four different plans on how to handle the plant, and the town, and then run them all past Deet.

The thud of the shuttle landing brought her out of her reverie, and they all quickly shed the safety harnesses and climbed out. By local time, it was shortly after dawn, even though by ship time it was practically lunch. But a five hour time difference wasn't too bad; at least she wasn't landing at local midnight, like Moon was.

With some biotic assistance from the brood warrior, they offloaded their four crates of supplies. "Alright, step one, reconnoiter the immediate area," she said, drawing her pistol and suiting action to word. They had landed at the edge of the settlement, and the only buildings nearby were a three-story farm mansion and a pair of barn sheds designed for industrial machinery.

Leaving the crates behind, they moved up on the buildings professionally, sweeping the barns first. Shepard could have identified the equipment if she used the ship to access an extranet search engine, but none of it seemed tampered with, and the buildings were empty of even local pests. Moving on to the house, they paused near the back door. _I sense something_, Stardancer whispered in their minds. _Odd smells. The wind has diluted them too much, but whatever made it is long gone._

"Three days long gone?" Shepard whispered back, catching the bright white flick of a mental yes. "Alright. Let's sweep the rooms, but stay close, and do your best to get an ID."

_They are not yahg, of that I can be sure. Nor do they smell like the ruins of the lost races of the last cycle_. Deet glanced back at the brood warrior, then hovered a hand above the door plate. As it whisked open, Shepard ducked inside the room in a flash, glancing over the laundry equipment, already moving through the open doorway to the hallway beyond.

They went room by room, using mostly hand signals. Shepard had spent an hour with Destin, tweaking her bug detection system to maximum, but caught absolutely nothing. Plates of food moldered on the kitchen table; the entertainment system was locked to a station broadcasting a dead signal; one bedroom had a set of clothing, obviously freshly removed, tossed over a chair but otherwise normal. She even checked the ceiling, but old paint sealed the attic access hatch. "I think we're clear." She holstered her pistol, noting Deet's sigh of relief as he relaxed, and turned to the brood warrior. "What can you tell me?"

_Not yahg, nor drell, human, Singer, or any other race we know of. Their scent reminds me of Moon, flesh crossed with machine, but I could not be certain of that song without finding one._ Stardancer paced, side to side, appendages twitching. _Whatever they used, it acted instantly. Not chemical or biological. Biotic, perhaps? Aside from we Singers, it is rare, but not unheard of. Tech, perhaps? Sonic frequencies are known to cause problems; stasis fields are expensive but possible; other discoveries not made by Alliance or yahg?_

"I'm curious how they got something that worked on drell and human alike." Deet shrugged at Shepard's raised eyebrow. "One of those bedrooms, the dresser had drell scale polish, but the bathrooms otherwise are full of human grooming products."

"Good catch," Shepard said, turning back towards the stairs. "Alright. We'll take over this place as our temporary headquarters, but leave everything in the crates for the moment. Let's start with patrol plan Charlie." She glanced at the chief, who nodded. It took them a few minutes to get the crates inside, stacked carefully in the living room next to the front door.

They quickly went through seven more residences along a straight line path towards the plant. The details were different, but the picture was the same – humans and drell, vanished mid-task without a trace.

The plant was looming large over the fields; her brain immediately identified it as a heavy cruiser. _I'm too used to space_, she berated herself. Office spaces stuck out the front of the building, so she motioned for her team to start there. Stardancer reluctantly sealed his enviro-suit, at least until they could identify whether the place actually produced blood spray, or any other toxic or addictive chemicals.

The offices stood empty, displays long since turned to power saving mode. Passing by one desk, she tapped the controls for one, only to have nothing happen. She looked at Deet, who shrugged, and tried another terminal with the same result. "Computers wiped?" she asked quietly. He shrugged again, giving a wishy-washy waggle with his free hand. "Log it, we'll come back to check."

The main areas of the floor held only faint dusty sunbeams, the machinery quiescent and dark. It took them a few minutes to locate the light controls, as the dirty windows under the eaves barely gave enough illumination to avoid stubbing their toes. When the lights came on, Deet gagged at the sight, and Shepard fought down her own nausea.

The plant wasn't a cover for drug manufacture, but a cover for the illegal smuggling of exotic animals. And every single one of them had been killed with a precise shot to the brain. Animals from Earth, Rakhana, Shandrakor, and a dozen other worlds that she could recognize, left to rot for three days. Her stomach twisted at the sight of a trio of dogs, the mom curled protectively around her dead pups. "Shepard to _Hades_."

"We read you, patching you through to Moon." The calm voice of the communication petty officer on watch helped her calm down.

"Shepard. What is it?" Moon's monotone did not vary. Of course, he was probably still on his initial search, even if he had been planetside for two hours longer than her.

"What we thought was a blood spray slash dairy plant? Turned out to be an operation to breed exotic animals. But every single one of them was shot. Do we have someone with experience in ballistic and ammunition alloy tracing?" Even if the mystery abductors had made a point of killing all of these animals, unless they had medical tech even further ahead of the Alliance, there was no way they had taken every single sliver of metal from the wounds.

"If we don't, we'll get one. Good job. Keep looking." He disconnected abruptly, and she stopped to look around. Deet had gotten his nausea under control, though he still looked unnaturally pale.

"Stardancer? I don't know if you want to, but I think it's safe to come out of the suit." She scanned the room once more. Most of the enclosures were simple cages, quick-welded bars of cheap steel or aluminum, depending on the animal. The birds had been in a series of connected aviary cages, all set with mesh curtains.

_I would like to sing free, but we have not cleared the building yet._ His voice was shaded with faint brown irritation like nails on a chalkboard, so she pulled herself together, casting one last sad look at a pair of sand scrats from Ulysses Peak, their tawny fur matted with dried blood.

They walked through three large rooms, one of which did actually have dairy processing equipment – no doubt for the newborn animals who needed extra milk. Short of opening every drawer in the offices or crawling into the milk vats, this building was clear. "Alright, we're good. Stardancer, see if you can pick up any other scents of these invaders. Deet, comb the animal area. Most of those rounds would have gone straight through, and I want to know if they're radically different from what we use. I'll be in the offices checking their electronics."

They both acknowledged the orders, and the three of them split up. She started digging into the computers, starting by picking a random one in an office, belonging to some office drone, not someone in charge. Partly, she hoped that they might have spent less time on the common computers. Conversely, she also hoped that it would give her an idea of what to look for on the more complex computers the supervisors no doubt had.

An hour later, Teri was so engrossed in her diagnostics, trying to figure out how they had wiped every trace of operating software from the device, that she nearly jumped out of the chair when her omni-tool pinged. "Shepard. The _Rhine_ is sending down a couple of lab techs. They'll work on recovering rounds and processing the scene." She forced herself to breathe steadily at the sound of Moon's voice. "Any other progress?"

"Every computing device here has been utterly wiped. If they weren't still on, they wouldn't _turn_ on, and damn if I can figure out how." She restrained the urge to draw her pistol and shoot one of the offending terminals. "I've run tests on six of them so far, nothing."

"We're getting the same thing here, and Ripples says something is off with the station's orbit. If they wiped the navigation computer, then the orbit has already started to decay." He fell silent for a moment but left the channel open, so she waited. "Check the rest of the town. Look for any other discrepancies. You've got two days."

"Understood." She barely got the word out before he cut off. Giving up on the peon's terminals, she moved to the main office, appointed with natural wood paneling, gilt fixtures, and similar tacky reminders of new money. To her frustration, fifteen minutes with this computer left her still no clues to go on, and she turned off her program, glared at the desk and kicked it for good measure. "Pieces of crap! What the hell kind of aliens showed up here, a whole fleet of fucking AI?"

That thought actually made her pause to consider it. There had been multiple research studies done into AI over the years, but so far, nothing that came up with a workable personality. Without fail, every AI had either destabilized itself, essentially dissolving into random pieces of code, or else it had gone rogue and attempted (or succeeded) in taking over electronic protocols of other devices like security mechs or environmental systems, and proceeded to kill as many organics as they could find. It wasn't beyond the realm of possibility that some lunatic had built up an AI without Alliance oversight, and it went rogue.

Mentally chastising herself, she moved back towards the main rooms. _Even it was an AI, we're still facing the same question of "How the hell did they kidnap thirty million people?" Though it would explain the electronic blackout._ She came into the main room, where Deet methodically scraped away at the concrete support pillar. "Got something?"

He tapped a foot at a clean MRE wrapper, on which she could barely make out small black flecks, smaller than a fingernail. "Trying to get one more out of this, but visually? Never seen anything like it before. My gut says it's some kind of manufactured carbon lattice." She squatted down and peered at it closely. They were black grains, a little smaller than a seed.

"Wait, you're saying their guns shoot artificial diamonds?" He grunted an agreement as his blade rasped off another layer of cement. "That's kind of cool, but it seems awfully inefficient."

"Eh, depends. Mostly we use an aluminum-tungsten alloy because it's cheap and lightweight. Ship guns have a higher percentage of tungsten in the alloy, and we've experimented with steel, platinum, iridium, even depleted uranium." He pulled his knife out, another black speck balancing on the tip, and lowered it to the wrapper. "Obviously, you could do it with diamond, or hell, with anything. You could build a gun that fired mass effect propelled flower petals, and they'd sure as hell hurt when they hit you. It'd just be expensive." Brushing away some of the concrete dust, he folded up the wrapper around the flecks.

"If you say so. Ballistics isn't my thing, but we are getting a couple guys down from the _Rhine_ who do know that stuff, so we'll turn those over to them." She looked around. "Where'd Stardancer go?"

Deet shrugged again. "Said he was going to walk the perimeter again, see if he could pick up which entrance they preferred." He frowned, looking down at his omni. "That was half an hour ago, though."

They shared a glance, reaching for their pistols and moving for the nearest exit, hitting the button and bursting through the open door, scanning the surrounding fields as they emerged into the sunlight. _Is there cause for alarm?_ the brood warrior asked, waving an appendage from the far corner of the building. They relaxed, stowing their weapons. _I believe I have found something. In the fields, this way._

They followed him, the broad body pushing waist-high stalks out of the way, the path already clearly walked before, and a quarter mile away, the found what he meant. In a fallow field, there were faint but definite impressions of landing craft. Shepard snapped pictures while Deet paced off the area and used his own laser measure to calculate the size and weight of the craft. "If I'm right? They either landed three shuttles here, _centimeters_ apart from each other, or they had one craft the size of a freight truck that weighs half what ours do."

"Give me a rough sketch of both, just to confirm with what I'm estimating here," Shepard ordered, tapping furiously away at her omni, all of the data being uploaded to the _Hades_ for analysis. Five minutes later, a simple wireframe hologram projected between his hands, with a little stick figure man for comparison. "Fuck. Ok, this could not have been the only landing site. Even with one big vehicle, vice three small ones, even if they stacked up unconscious colonists like crates in a storeroom, they wouldn't be able to fit more than maybe four thousand here."

_The question must be sung – how are we sure they _took_ them all?_ Stardancer asked, mental voice thick with bilious regret and anger. _Could they not have left dead, like those animals, and they still lie undiscovered?_

Shepard bent down, peering at the landing spots under magnification. "They couldn't have taken multiple trips to the same spot – I don't care how good the pilot, you don't put a shuttle down to within a millimeter of its previous spot." She turned around, gazing across the field at the handful of roofs visible from their spot. "Yeah, Stardancer, they could have. How fast could we search every building?"

"On foot?" Deet closed his eyes, tipping his head back as he did the math in his head. "Twenty hours, if we stop for proper rest breaks, and not counting sleep in there. Sixteen, maybe, but we'll be getting tired and sloppy by the end of it. And we should already be taking a break."

She looked at her time; it was almost dinner on board, and they had skipped lunch in their haste. "Alright. Back to our headquarters. We eat, take 30 minutes of rest, then take four hours of searching before a sleep break."

In silence, they trooped back to the "dairy plant," stopping long enough to give the science personnel directions on what to do, and walked the two kilometers back to the manor house. Their meal likewise passed in silence, each lost in their own thoughts of what the invaders had done with the population.

* * *

Moon looked up at the sign. _Welcome to Fort Brask_, it said, the letters gleaming under the faint starlight. He looked over at Porridge and Petty Officer Mads as they both stood shivering in the midnight air. "Come on, people. Turn up your heating elements and let's get started." He drew his pistol, sweeping the guard shack at the gate before turning towards the nearest building.

"Ah, sir?" Mads asked tentatively. "Shouldn't we be bringing the supplies along with us?"

"If there's someone here, having the crates will slow us down. If there's no one here, we can come back and move them at our leisure." He looked at the collection of buildings. "Right now, let's check out the main admin building, both for clues and because it's closest. If it's clear, we can bring the supplies inside."

Porridge scanned outside the gate. Around three kilometers of open wilderness stretched between the base and Riptide, mostly low scrubland normally occupied by nothing more threatening than a khaj, the local equivalent of a rabbit or squirrel. Her grenade launcher was out and ready, sweeping the fields along with her eyes.

Moon led the way, Mads glancing around like a skittish cat, but at least holding his pistol and moving professionally. The building was deserted, lights off. "Contact was lost with the planet at around twenty two hundred local time, well after dark," Moon mused. "Yet, no lights on except the automated street lights. Why would the invaders turn off the lights when they left?"

"Force of habit? Prefer darker environments?" Porridge was clearly guessing as much as he was. "If they loosed some kind of hallucinogen, maybe the troops turned everything off before they left." Moon grunted, and hit the door button. They crept inside, Porridge sweeping the middle with Moon to her left and Mads to her right. The atrium was empty of everything but dust and the faint hum of the ventilation.

The sign giving directions was easy enough to read with light-enhanced vision, and Moon used hand signals to direct them down the hall. They checked each room, one at a time, entering long enough to look underneath desks, behind cabinets and potted plants, and sweep the bathroom stalls. Everything was deserted, including the Commanding Officer's office. "There's nobody here," Mads muttered.

"Maybe not. Check the computer," Moon ordered, ignoring the electronics to access the document safe concealed in the bookshelf against one wall – an old Alliance standard piece of equipment, obviously picked up surplus. To his surprise, the safe was still locked, and it took him a moment to dredge the override code out of his memory. "Everything's still in here. Classified documents for the local forces. Movements of pirates and raiders in the nearest parts of the Terminus, access codes for orbital defenses, everything." His voice didn't quite reflect his surprise.

"The computer's not responding at all, sir," Mads said. "It's like someone just hooked up the display power to an empty box." Porridge was looking out the windows, scanning the open field used for ceremonies.

"Hmm. Note it for later. Let's get the crates in here, then check a few of the other machines." They went back outside into the chill night air, lifting the crates of food and emergency supplies. Once they stacked everything in the atrium, they did another quick sweep of the building. "Alright, here's the plan. The two buildings down the left side of the field are barracks. We'll give them a cursory once-over, but I don't expect to find anything there. Past them is the meal hall, store, and the vehicle bay. On the right side is the training building, another barracks, and then the armory.

"The two buildings I'm most interested in are the armory and the vehicle bay. If any resistance was made, it would probably have been at or near those buildings. We'll start on the left side. If the terminals in the barracks duty office are working, we can get master key programs for the rooms." Mads' expression was eloquent in displaying his doubt over that outcome. "For now, hack the front door closed."

"Any particular passcode I should set it for, sir?" Mads asked as they moved to leave.

"Three eight two two seven. It's an old code for FUBAR." Porridge snorted in amusement as she pulled out her grenade launcher again, and Mads bent over the door panel, popping it open and spending two minutes to reprogram it. "We good?"

"All done, sir. Without the base security computers online, it's not going to reset short of someone else coming over here to do so." Finished, the technician pulled out his pistol again.

"Hey, Mads," Porridge asked as they skulked around the side of the building. "What was your specialty? You don't act like an MP."

"Yeah, I'm a maintenance tech. Enviro systems." He almost tripped on a rock in the landscaping, causing Moon to turn and glare at them both. "I've been studying criminal justice because I want to be a crime scene tech when I get out," he continued, much quieter.

"You poor bastard." Porridge grinned mockingly.

"Enough with the chit-chat," Moon ordered, and they fell silent again. Their footsteps echoed softly off the deserted walls of the main corridor. The office was at their end of the building, the computer screens just as blank, but they could see that at least half of the doors left open. Wide open, not merely unlocked.

"This place is giving me the heebie jeebies," Porridge muttered as they approached the first pair of rooms. They lay as barren as the main building, personal belongings left untouched, mostly stowed within regulation. Hacking the locks on the closets took a few minutes, but they were likewise empty, clear of any obvious contraband or weapons.

They finally found something on the third floor of the second barracks, after three frustrating hours of searching. While sweeping a closet, Mads bumped a drawer, which instantly started playing music. They all froze, and Porridge moved to cover the door to the hallway while Moon and Mads slid open the drawer.

Inside they found a fairly standard omni-tool, playing something melodic. Next to it, half buried under what looked like a geode, was a metallic insect leg. With Moon's pistol aimed at it, Mads gingerly lifted the amethyst rock, setting it atop the drawers.

Revealed was a bug, slightly smaller than Moon's fist. The geode had clearly smashed the thing enough to disable it. Not kill, because that word applied to living things – he could tell it was part mechanic. "Moon to _Hades_," he said into his own omni.

"_Hades_ here." Commander Taylor sounded eager, obviously hoping to hear more good news after Shepard found the weapons fire.

"We've got piece of evidence number two. An artificial insectoid, fist sized, partly crushed by one of the locals and shoved in a drawer before his capture." Glancing around the room, he picked up a clothes hanger, nudging the insect with it as Mads prepared to drop the geode on it again. "We will secure it for transport and study."

"Roger that," she said gleefully. "Do you want a shuttle to come down now for it, or will you hold until you've completed searching the base?"

He considered it. Sending one of the shuttles back now was only a risk if the unknown aliens were still here – and it damn sure wasn't the yahg, not with this kind of tech. "Now. We'll meet them at the landing site." He cut the channel, looking at Mads. "You do have evidence containers?"

The younger man winced. "They're in the crates."

"Porridge, go with him. Lock both doors, same code. If anyone opens without using the code, I'm shooting to kill." Mads gulped nervously, while Porridge just nodded.

"Let's go, kid. Faster we get there, faster we can get back and give this bug thing to the guys on board." They left, still checking the hallways as the door slid closed.

He sat there in the dark. Five minutes went by, then ten, and at eleven minutes twenty-seven seconds, the code beeped in the door. He still had his pistol ready, the dresser partial cover just in case, but it was just Mads and Porridge. "Gather that thing up."

The evidence container was a small blob of memory plastic, which Mads held above the insect, typing the specifications into his omni. It oozed out, carving out the top layer of the cheap pressed board that made up the bottom of the drawer, encasing the insect in a dome shape six inches wide. The geode went into another blob of plastic, in case there was something special about the rock that aided in disabling it.

On the way out, Moon paused at the door, marking the name plate. "Porridge, when we get back on board, write up a letter of commendation, possibly posthumous, for Corporal Francois."

"Possibly?" she asked, doubt clear as she opened the door to the stairs.

"If we can find these bastards in time, it won't be posthumous. We don't know they're dead. There's no blood stains, no other bodily fluids to indicate they were killed here." He stopped at the bottom of the stairs as his omni buzzed.

"Shepard to Moon. We found indentations for shuttles or other landing craft."

"Send me images." He displayed them, the hologram hovering above his wrist. "Good job. Porridge, Mads, see these? Rectangular indents, roughly eight centimeters by fifteen. Six of them in an oblong shape ten meters wide by thirty-five meters long. If they took everyone on base, they had to have landed somewhere nearby." They all looked up as the lights of their own shuttle grew in the sky. "But first, we turn over the evidence."

Porridge glanced at the insect, its container dangling from a mesh bag strapped to Mads' waist. "Just wait, you bitches," she muttered. "Just wait until we find you."

* * *

**_Codex Entry: Rakhana_**

The planet Rakhana is the homeworld of the drell species. Technically, it lies outside of the normal Alliance borders, but has been fortified in recent centuries with the entry of the drell into galactic civilization. Today, the planet is slowly flourishing after two centuries of terraforming has fixed the environmental damage done, and it is host to nearly half a billion drell citizens.

One millennium ago, during the previous Reaper Cycle, the drell homeworld was experiencing a slow ecological collapse caused by overpopulation, overindustrialization, and a lack of pollution control. An alien race known as the hanar (see Dead Zone Races codex) approached the planet after the drell sent out radio signals asking for help, responding within a surprisingly short twenty-five years. The hanar, either intentionally or accidentally, released a micro-organism designed to devour the worst of the pollutants and help restore soil quality. However, this bacteria released large amounts of carbon monoxide. With the spread of poisonous air from every body of water on the planet, the hanar then fled, taking a few hundred thousand of the leaders of Rakhana, leaving the rest of the drell to die.

Over the next century, the bacteria devoured all of the pollutants and died out, leaving just over one million drell alive, out of a population that had once topped eleven billion. These survivors had largely fallen back into tribal behavior, socially, though they did retain a level of technology equivalent to the early Renaissance of Earth. The next four centuries brought gradual technological and social advancement, until the yahg came to the planet, hunting drell warriors for sport. Unable to match the yahg in space, or counter any weaponry, the drell nonetheless managed to negotiate how often and how many yahg could come to their planet. The first contact arrival, coinciding with the next yahg hunting season, put an end to their predation.

Modern Rakhana is still incredibly light, industrially speaking. Most manufacturing is done in space, as the system boasts two asteroid rings with abundant amounts of heavy metals.


	7. Ch4: Information

_Author's Note: Everyone's starting to come together, though they're not meeting up quite yet. Thanks goes as always to my beta, Palaven Blues, and to my wonderful fans._

* * *

One week after their arrival, all twelve of the N7 sat in the conference room as Moon connected the QEC. "Commandant, we are receiving you," he said when the hologram popped up.

"Good. I've read the daily reports you've submitted, but I want to hear the highlights from you personally," Commandant Ayers said.

Moon nodded, moving back to his seat at the table and pulling up various pictures and evidence analysis reports. "Our initial investigations confirmed that every piece of accessible electronics was wiped clean. A few isolated items were not scrubbed, but none of them contained useful information.

"What we did find was five different fist-sized cybernetic organisms, based on a quad-strand DNA not seen in any race living or dead so far discovered. In two different locations, colonists in sealed rooms managed to fight back against the invaders, and though they attempted to scrub the scenes, we still collected enough DNA evidence to confirm the invaders have the same quad-strand DNA structure.

"The invaders clearly have far superior electronic warfare to our own. While they could not break the quantum entanglement, they were able to wipe the software on the interface, preventing any possible communication in that manner. Their weaponry appears on a par with our own, but uses a special, artificially-created synthetic crystal that's about ninety percent carbon.

"The evidence gathered so far leaves us with one possible lead at this time, rumors of an alien race trading weapons on Omega. The alternative is that this species is concealing itself utterly from us. Whether they have made an alliance with the Yahg is currently unclear." Moon finally paused, glancing around the room and nodding to Ripples. "My Singer companions have made sure that all the brood warriors on the _Rhine_ are aware of the particular scent of these aliens. They can share that with the rest of the Alliance."

Commandant Ayers nodded along with the whole thing, her gaze flicking between the matching reports on her terminal and Moon's impassive face. "Your next move will be to go to Omega and attempt to catch these aliens?"

"If we can confirm they simply have the same DNA structure, it will be enough," he said.

"Is the rest of your team aware of the hazards of Omega?" Her gaze swept over the gathered men and women around the table. "It is one of the most dangerous places outside of Alliance territory."

"Between Benson and myself, I think we can handle it, Commandant." Teri was sure something more was going on here, but she just didn't know either of them well enough to tell what. At least Benson seemed just as lost.

"Very well, Captain. Go get them. While you're there, see if you can find out how these new aliens connect to the yahg, if at all. Ayers out." The signal shut off with a heavy sense of finality.

Moon swiveled in his chair, looking down the table. "I know none of the Singers have been to Omega. What about the rest of you?" Only one hand shot up, dangling loosely above Benson's grinning face. "As I thought. Benson, tell everyone what it's like."

She stretched as she straightened up in her chair, her eyes suddenly alight and eager for the first time since Teri had seen her. "Omega's like a fucking libertarian paradise. The only two things that matter are how well you can shoot and how many credits you can drop. Last time I was there, the Haze and the Bombadiers were still duking it out for dominance. They're the major gangs. You pay protection money, or just be badass enough the average 'banger isn't going to fuck with you unless you fuck first."

"So, we go in there like a bad movie stereotype, and we'll be good?" Porridge asked.

"It can't be quite that easy," Shepard said. "For starters, unless Moon has another ship parked somewhere, we're still in an Alliance frigate. Only two thirds of us can set foot on the station without personal cloaking fields or other stealth measures, and those aren't infallible."

Moon held up a hand. "We're not heading straight there. The Omega system is the only one we've found with four relays. Only one of those is unmapped, so it's almost certainly how this species is coming in. But just in case, we're going to park in the outer system and watch all of them for two weeks."

Taryn smiled. "You have access to outside information to pick such a time frame, I take it."

"Indeed. We have operatives and freelancers on the station, of course, just like the yahg do. The Haze have been steadily increasing in firepower over the last two years. Each increase has been almost exactly six weeks apart, and it's been four and a half since the last one." Moon pulled up a holo of the system. "We'll park here. It's closest between the unmapped relay and the one towards yahg space, so if they come through from either one, we can follow them."

He rose to his feet, prompting everyone else to do the same. "We'll be in Omega in seven hours. Relax, and get ready for the mind-numbing tedium of a stake-out."

* * *

In a similar ship on the other side of the galaxy, six yahg stood around glaring at each other. Though large enough to house them, their small ship felt crowded. On top of that, the lack of slaves was all starting to wear on them. Their leader, Paragh, stomped one foot. "Let out all the traces, so I can see if we have a firm trail to follow," he growled, eyes peering from behind half-closed eyelids.

Kralb twitched a hand towards one of the pouches of her outfit, slowing as Paragh snarled at her again. "It is not Alliance," she said firmly. "Unknown weapons, electronic warfare beyond their capabilities. And the smell."

Azord nodded, the warrior's yellow-tan hand resting conspicuously near his knife. "They smell like a human tank and a _prrz'k_ wasp laid eggs together," he said. "But they could be allies of the food races."

Paragh paced two steps back and forth, as wide as the room would let him. "That is not enough! High Chief himself will take our heads if we fail. No 'could be' can be brought!"

"There is one place we can try for more information," Morrza said, the other scientist drawing back defensively as all eyes turned to her. "The Advisors gave us funds, so we travel to Omega, and see what information the Keeper has to offer us."

Urban myth had it the Keeper was some sort of mutant telepath, or cyborg, or even the first successful AI. Whoever it was had access to information in the highest levels of both governments, every corporation in the Alliance, every clan in the Yahg Imperium, and every pirate band worth mentioning in the Terminus. Such knowledge always came with a high price tag, whether in credits or favors.

"You would have us _buy_ our way to success like a _human?_" Paragh snarled, talons snapping out just short of the smaller scientist.

"If it will keep my head attached to my shoulders, I agree," Ordek muttered. "Besides, we need more supplies, and Omega is as good a place as any to acquire them. I can only do so much with preserved rations." He treated their lack of live prey as a personal affront, and if they couldn't buy humans or drell, they could at least get some _taffit_ birds, which were the next best thing.

"Fine, fine. We'll head for Omega, and see what we can get. But keep your hunting eyes scattered there. If the Alliance is behind this, then they will have sent their best." Paragh grinned. "If Moon is around, I want another shot at him."

They split up quickly, scattering to their separate domains and fighting to clear the pheromones from their scent receptors. Long travels in enclosed spaces, just like this, were the greatest cause of infighting among the yahg, and even though they knew they could not afford any more combat, the instinctual drive was hard to overcome. All of them bore the small scars of territorial infighting, even with their own places carefully staked out and territory marked.

Safely back in the cockpit, Boprez sank into his chair, flexing his talons against the hard metal of his controls. He was a prodigy in his own right, unparalleled in a fighter craft, with more capital ships destroyed than any other yahg pilot. Yet in this group, he felt like a stripling still missing adult hunting coloration. If there was any group capable of finding these mysterious aliens and avenging their dead, it was his fellows on board.

Problem was, he wasn't sure if there _was_ a group capable enough. These aliens had taken three starting colony planets, and a vacation world set aside specifically for the High Chief and his concubines, and not one of them fought back. When these aliens found that Boprez was on his tail – and they would, of that he was certain – he wondered if he, too, would vanish silently into the dark emptiness between the stars. Tapping one talon against the button guard, he hoped he would at least get to take a shot at them first.

* * *

A large, dank room lay near the center of the hollowed asteroid that was Omega. It had been many things over the previous two cycles, nightclub and storage, meeting hall and industry. Now it was the central hub of the Haze, a sort of relaxation room instantly recognizable to any debauched Roman emperor or ambitious pornography director. The elite of the gang lay around on exotic fabrics and expensive furniture, being fed, drugged, massaged, or otherwise pampered by their choice of companion.

In a shadowed alcove at the back, the undisputed masters of Omega lay in their own hedonistic den. Despite their current lethargic doze, both of them sat up alertly when the message system chimed a particular code. "Do you have another target for us?" the Collector demanded the moment the channel opened.

Rosen squinted at the screen, eyes still bloodshot from too much drell toxin. "Fuck, man, really? You just took a couple of million people! The Alliance is going to have extra ships trawling around every planet they own for a couple of weeks. Give it some time to cool off first." That particular tactic had served him well to drive the drell-controlled Gladiator gang from the station, giving them just enough time to think they could consolidate before striking at another front.

"We will deliver the payment for the last target. There will not be more until you provide us with another target." The Collector disconnected, the screen blipping yellow for a brief moment, making Jolyn wince away.

"What is their damage?" she muttered, stretching languidly on their love nest.

"Fuck if I know," he muttered, tossing twice before finally sitting up. "Damnit, that soured my mood. Now I gotta go do some fucking work." He stepped towards the door, stumbling as his pants wrapped around his waist before falling to the floor.

"You might want to put on your armor and weapons first," she teased him, draping his shirt over his head with an expert throw. "And send one of the girls in here with food, I'm hungry."

Rosen laughed as he tugged on his clothes, somehow managing not to fall on his ass in the process, and threaded his way through their headquarters. A full dozen lower-ranking men stood outside the corridor, guns and armor on prominent display as the citizens of lawless Omega went about their day. For the average citizen, not much had changed except for who collected their "taxes." With a pair of pistols clipped to his hip, he strode through the streets, moving past the busy market and into a residential district.

He maintained a series of apartments, closets, and storage spaces throughout the station just for reasons like this. He ducked into one of them, a ratty room barely large enough for the bed, food heater, and refresher unit. Flipping the bed up against the wall, he stripped out of his clothes, dropping them into a box along with the pistols, and slipped into a maintenance jumpsuit with a completely different pistol.

From here, he went through three different levels of the station, slipping through crowds with the ease of long practice. Taking control of Haze was a project four years in the making for him, and Rosen had been careful to let none of his skills slip, no matter how tempting the prize. That was how he'd caught Perry on the shitter to put a bullet between his eyes. Into a storage space, replacing the maintenance coveralls with a fancy shipboard jumpsuit, slicking back his hair to look like a poncy smuggler, with a shotgun covered in gaudy flame decals.

From here, he went up three more levels, close to the 'top' of the station. This neighborhood was a mix of closed-up stores, and high-end places catering to the kind of wealthy fop he looked like. With a quick scan of the streets, he slipped into a door to a closed shop. Despite the blackened, grimy windows, the interior of the store was both barren and clean of dirt and the common detritus that lined the streets. A beaded curtain lined the other door, and he cautiously slipped through with only a soft rattle to mark his passage.

The small storeroom in the back held only a podium with a data terminal, the screen displaying a spinning, ancient analog key. He hated having to acquire information from the Keeper, but his options at the moment were limited. All the weapons from the Collectors had given him control of the station, yes, but not the space surrounding it. Rumors already flew around the station about various pirate groups being hired by the Gladiators or the Bombadiers, or just coming on their own, to take out the Haze leaders and control Omega for themselves.

Licking dry lips, he stepped up to the terminal, and the display instantly changed to reflect his own face. Only instead of a realistic copy, his copy was a cartoonish, plastic-looking copy. "Please state your data request," it said back to him with his own voice, smoother without the effects of years of smoking various intoxicants.

"I need to know the least defended planet with human colonists and a population of at least thirty million," he said. _How long before whoever's behind this mess puts two and two together and stops helping me?_ The thought of losing out on his meal ticket was a quiet terror in the back of his mind. Without a constant supply of power cells for the bizarre weapons, his control of both the gang and the station would be shorter than his own life … though not by much.

"Processing," his double said back. After two minutes, he started to fidget, tapping one foot, then the other, then both in syncopation. By the five minute mark, he was drumming against his thighs with both thumbs as he paced back and forth, four steps between the side walls while his cartoon face watched from the screen.

At the ten minute mark, as his hand caressed the butt of his pistol and he thought about putting a bullet into the display, it finally spoke. "Information draw complete. Least protected target is planet Aragon, system Tolkein. Galactic coordinates –"

"Yeah, yeah, whatever. Just tell me how well defended it is," Rosen interrupted.

"Current defenses are comprised of eight orbital GARDIAN laser batteries, one orbital station at L3 orbital height, and two Alliance destroyers. Your payment has already been deducted from your accounts."

"Fine, thanks, I'm going now," he grumbled, slipping back out through the beaded curtain and then into the street, slipping back into his smuggler persona as he went. On the screen, the cartoonish copy watched him leave, then turned and walked off the side of the screen. Five minutes later, the spinning key popped back up on the display.

* * *

Nine days passed by on board the _Hades_. For most of the crew, it was business as usual; their normal orders had them cruising around in stealth mode, slipping in and out of systems in the Terminus with weeks between port calls. But for most of the N7, it was soul-grating boredom. Moon seemed used to it, or at least kept up his impeccable poker face as each day passed by with no notification. Benson, surprisingly, also stayed cool, despite her firecracker reputation. By the sixth day, Shepard was all but climbing the walls. She'd started visiting the gym twice a day now, along with the other human members. Taryn could, of course, just disappear into his memories, but even his sniper stoicism was reaching its limits.

Her feet pounded away at the treadmill and she jabbed at the air in front of her, wishing for a punching bag at the same time. Smith was on the treadmill next to her, suddenly accelerating into a sprint as sweat gleamed on his head. Feeling the need for a challenge, she glanced at his display before bumping her own speed up to match. He glanced over as her pace rose, grinning and offering her a fist bump as they both sprinted out a mile, then a mile and a half, before dialing it back down to a slow jog.

"You two done with your PT pissing match?" Moon said from the doorway. Arak set down her weights with barely a clink, sitting up on the bench. "We just had an unidentified ship come through the number four relay. Shower and meet in the conference room, everybody." The three humans nodded, giving the equipment a quick sterilization wipe before rushing off to their quarters.

The conference room was crowded again as they rushed in. Benson flicked through all the scans of the alien ship as Moon entered last. "This is what we have." The holographic image wasn't as detailed as she liked, but there was only so much they could do without risking detection. "As you can see, this ship has mass equivalent to an Alliance battleship, or slightly greater. It's got a drive core big enough to push around a dreadnaught, but it only has an eezo core."

"That's good," Porridge said. "Gives us an edge in maneuverability, but their shields are going to be nigh impenetrable to anything short of another battleship."

"What about fighters? Drop a couple of neutron bombs up their ass and I bet they'll notice," Arak said, snarling.

"Don't jump the gun," Moon said. "Even if these are the ones responsible, we need to prove it. Then we can call in the fleet. But right now, we don't have battleships, fighters, or neutron bombs." He glared around impartially, his artificial eye whirring. "We're on their tail, and they are headed straight for Omega. We can't dock without being detected, and to minimize visual detection we should stay at least five million kay away from the station."

"How are we going to find out what they're up to, or get a DNA sample?" Shepard said, putting voice to everyone else's question.

"That's where our friends in Alliance Unified Intelligence come in." Even the brood warriors let out a groan, their mental flurry of scraping pine needles the perfect accompaniment to the sound of disappointment. "Yes, most of us have had to go in and clean up after one of their agents, but they have a ship we can board without suspicion, and they've been the ones tracking the Haze weapons shipments." He turned to the brood warriors. "Obviously, since there are no Singers who've gone rogue and escaped to the Terminus, you can't accompany us. So Ripples is in charge of the ship. If anything goes wrong, I'll be calling you for a rescue. Bring in all the Marines and spit in their faces."

_We shall be your flankers_, Ripples promised. _Luck in your hunt, brother Moon._

"We're boarding a shuttle in ten," Moon continued. "On the ship, they have other clothing for us to blend in. We're smugglers, and we're on shore leave after dropping off a big load of blood spray. AUI has managed to get us a docking berth next to the usual alien shuttle spot. Observation _only_ unless you can get some DNA inconspicuously. The very last thing we want to do is tip them off."

Shepard and Benson were the first ones out the door and quick-stepping through the corridor. Their personal weapons lockers were right next to the shuttle bay, and they grabbed the ones that would fit smugglers, mostly pistols and shotguns, though Taryn simply replaced a few pieces on his sniper rifle to make it look more beat up.

Benson leaped for the shuttle controls while Shepard checked everyone's safety harnesses, and a few moments later, they were out in space, drifting away from the _Hades_ far enough they could turn on the thrusters without giving away their position. "Shepard, help me with these," Moon said.

Frowning, she undid her harness, moving to his side. "Those look like some kind of old-fashioned gloves, sir." He handed her one, and she took it, examining it closely.

"You're not far off the mark. It's a synthetic material to mimic skin tone and feel." He held up one hand, and grasping the edges, helped him slide it all the way up to his elbow, carefully working out all the creases and folds until it lay smooth. He flexed his fingers carefully, articulating the digits to ensure it stretched properly. "Ironically, I can feel even less with it on, but at least it won't give me away." As she braced the other glove for him, the pseudo-skin hand reached up, deactivating his eye and pulling it out. "Need to change this one, too."

"You can really just swap your cybernetics like that?" Singh asked, sounding slightly ill.

"Not all of them. I have leg mods I can change out, if I have an hour and a tool kit, and the new eye takes a minute to sync properly with my visual cortex." He blinked rapidly several times as the new eye, a perfect shade match instead of the lighter sky-blue, spun in place. "Being the most visible N7 in the Alliance is occasionally a downside."

"Coming up on the smuggler ship now," Benson called back from the cockpit, and Shepard returned to her seat. The sudden deceleration jerked them against the harnesses, and the thump when they hit the deck made Shepard's teeth clack. "Welcome to your destination. Please return your seats and tray tables to the upright position."

"Has that ever been funny?" Arak muttered as they filed off.

"Welcome to the _Cape Cod_," a scarred man greeted them from outside the shuttle as the door opened. "I have enough clothes for you all, but changing room is somewhat limited, so I hope none of you are particularly shy." He grinned, two teeth gleaming silver in the flickering lights.

"Agent Massani," Moon greeted him. "You weren't who I expected."

The scarred man shrugged, running one hand through his uneven hair. "New orders. I'm supposed to go sign up as a freelancer for a group called the _Marauders_. Lucky me." Moon picked up the box that Massani pointed to. "We'll be at the station in an hour. This old rust bucket tends to limp."

"Try not to get shot in the head again," Moon said, passing out clothing. Terminus spacers tended towards adjustable, one-size-fits-all coveralls with lots of pockets – great for both holding spare parts when fixing up ships long past their use-by dates, and for carrying off anything small and valuable before the current owner could object. It also made doing a thorough search of someone nearly impossible.

"What can I say? It's my magnetic personality," the agent laughed. "Let me know when you're done. We've got some credits in our 'justified expenses' account with your names on them." He hit the door button, then kicked the door itself until it swung open in fits and stops.

"Who the hell was that?" Smith asked. Like the rest, he was already done stripping out of his N7 uniform. They'd all done far worse than change clothes in mixed company during N training, so nobody was really flustered about it, though personally Shepard thought that Arak's rainbow boxers were a bit much.

"Agent Ramses Massani, AUI. One of the few agents I actually enjoy pulling his ass out of the fire," Moon said, taking his own outfit. "He's one of their better agents."

"Captain," Benson said, twisting her short hair into some incredibly short, tight braids, "if we can't get a sample, there's another option." Moon scowled, the open display of emotion surprise enough to make everyone pause. "I'm just saying, it's an option."

"I'm not paying 'the Keeper' credits," Moon snarled. "Whoever it is needs to be identified and taken out."

"Hold on," Shepard said, holding up a hand. "First time to Omega and the Terminus. Who is the Keeper?" She made sure to put the same subtle emphasis on the name.

"The Keeper is a person or group unknown," Taryn explained. "They are information brokers, and considered to be the best of the group. Their prices are expensive, but several leaks of sensitive information to the yahg have been confirmed to have come through the Keeper." He slid a new heat sink into his rifle. "Like Captain Moon, I find it suspicious, and wonder just how they are able to acquire such information."

"What makes you so sure it's not one person?" Benson asked, strapping a hold-out pistol inside one sleeve.

"The amount of work required to get ahold of simply the Alliance information would require that the Keeper either be the head of the AUI herself, or run an organization capable of co-opting agents up and down the Alliance government and acting upon their openings." He shrugged, spreading his hands mirthlessly. "Since the AUI head does not live in or visit Omega, we are left with an organization."

Shepard thought about it as everyone stowed their Alliance gear and sat back down. "There's a third option, though I think it still ranks behind the group." Everyone looked at her expectantly. "The Keeper is the first stable AI we know of."

Arak shuddered. "That's the last thing we should be giving credits to, then," she said. "A VI is enough of a risk, I don't really want to serve on a ship that can think and decide for itself."

Moon glanced at his omni. "Enough talk. We'll be there in under an hour. Here's a map of the area." Everyone leaned forward, planning their mission in earnest.

* * *

The Omega Two relay activated, and on the bridge of the _Hades_, everyone on the bridge sat up nervously. _A yahg armed courier ship_, Ripples said, picking out the nervous thoughts flying around. _Calm yourselves,_ he said, filling his mental voice with soft green silk. _That ship holds normally three, at most. Worrying, but not critical._ His handling tentacles whipped back and forth as he gave orders through the computer, and moments later they were pushing forward, risking a small increase in heat to match speed with the yahg ship.

Thunder came up, scrambling off the ladder. _You called, songbrother?_

_We have yahg here_, Ripples explained in brown sandpapery rasping. _The timing cannot be a matter of luck. Someone else conducts a song we cannot yet hear._

_I hear_, Thunder sang back. The two brood warriors pressed against each other, joining their minds to reach out to the ship. Yahg biotics were rare, if more common than human ones, but rarely wasted on courier duty. The whisper of their mental breath barely passed over the ship before they realized there was not one, but two on board. _That is bad_, Thunder said, his voice edging towards piccolo yellow nervousness. _Six yahg, two biotics? Unheard of!_

_They are there_, Ripples chastised, holding his voice in calm sea-green confidence. _Moon is out of reach. We must follow to our limit and be prepared for fighting songs._

Lower in the ship, Stardancer perked up in the marine bunkroom. _Arms and armor,_ he sang to them, _for the yahg are here!_ His cards, like those of his four opponents, discarded to the table, but his winnings were swiftly collected into a carrying pouch before he scurried out the door. _To arms, warriors! We will let the brutes choose whether to fight, but we choose the victor!_ Bolstered by rushing water trumpets, they strapped into their heavy armor.

"Who are we?" their sergeant shouted.

"Pumas!" they shouted back.

"What are we going to do?"

"Murder those sons of bitches!" Their shout rattled the bulkheads around them, as all three ships closed on Omega.

* * *

**_Codex Entry: Alliance Space_**

Alliance Space is considered to encompass all star systems with any Alliance colony, base, or significant commercial installation. Officially, this includes over five hundred systems, and is generally considered to hold the 'bottom' wedge of the galaxy, bordering the Dead Zone clockwise and the Terminus counterclockwise.

Warp drive has significantly expanded the area that Alliance ships can reach. Exploration ships are usually independents, branching out from any unlocked mass relay, while Alliance military ships act to unlock new relay destinations. Over ten thousand star systems have received at least a cursory fly-through, but the economic requirements to building a new colony, mining facility, or other industrial construction means that in practice, only those systems closest to a relay receive any people after the original exploration.

The most dense areas of space have their relays towed out of their systems and into the dark space between systems. This has two effects, namely limiting Yahg incursion (due to their slower warp drives) and expanding the number of colonized star systems. While there are Alliance requirements to start a colony on a habitable planet, the number of planets discovered still outstrips the number of willing colonists. While there are one hundred seventy full member planets, there are another three hundred fourteen planets who have not yet met the population or industrial requirements needed for full membership and representation in the Alliance Senate and Commons.


	8. Ch5: Opening Moves

_Author's Note: Whew, it was a long weekend. Cub Scout popcorn fundraising is going to be my weekends for the immediate future. If you have some in your area, please show your support! If you don't, I humbly ask you use the link in my profile to support my scouts. They sure need it. As always, I love my fans, so leave reviews and tell me what you think of the chapter!_

* * *

The _Cape Cod_ docked smoothly with the station. The bulk of the alien vessel dwarfed them, a stony bulk blotting out the stars. Some kind of umbilical had extended from the ship to the cargo bay to give them access, and all the N7s had the same thought about such an obvious weak point. "Arashu, guide my steps," Taryn murmured, almost too quietly to hear, as they disembarked. Being loud and boisterous as the rest of the AUI crew was difficult; looking hungry for something other than the walls of a ship wasn't.

As planned, they split up fairly quickly. The docks were filled with bars, brothels, and merchants, all liberally spaced between the warehouses and small industrial shops, and that wasn't even counting the dozens of street hawkers, their wares dangling from coats, or omni-tool displays promising goods at their "cousin's" place "right around the corner." Teri was probably being unfair; some of them probably did have cousins just down the way, rather than leading people to a group of bored and broke gangers.

Arak was right behind Shepard, the shorter woman singing a bawdy tune in between threatening the street merchants. One unfortunate pickpocket was already stumbling away from her with a couple of broken fingers. The docking bay with the aliens was another hundred feet along, but they could see a trio of Haze gangers guarding the entrance. _So much for plan A_, Shepard thought dourly. She stopped, turning around. "I thought you said those hunks were down this way," she complained, loud enough to be overheard.

"They were the last time I was here," Arak said. "I'm sure they were here." She stumbled over towards the trio, the yahg looking increasingly amused as the two humans tried to puff themselves up more. "Did you kick them out? There was a whole house full of them."

"Baby, we're all the hunk you need," the darker-haired one on the right said, hooking the organic-looking rifle behind his back.

"I dunno," Arak said, tilting her head until she leaned into the wall. "You don't look ripped enough." She tugged at the waistline of his armor, causing the yahg to laugh. "What're _you_ laughing at, girly?" With the grey bandana tied around the horns, the yahg did look rather feminine.

"Stupid drunk humans," the yahg said. "Why don't you get out of here before you end up with more than you can handle?"

Scoffing, Arak swayed over towards the yahg, poking weakly with one finger. "Bah! I've 'handled a yahg before.'" She suddenly tittered. "Remember that time, Consi? When that drell bartender spiked our drinks?"

"I don't remember you and a yahg, but I do remember that bartender," Teri said, playing along. "Too bad neither of these guys are drell. They're so _flexible_," she gushed.

Arak peered around the one guy at the closed door. "What's in there, anyway? You keeping all the hunky guys for yourselves?"

"Secret Haze business, babe," he said, grabbing her arm and biting lightly at the inside of her wrist, making Arak giggle.

"Oooh, I bet it's some kind of weapons factory!" Arak said. "You can give me a tour, right? I proooomise not to tell a _soul_," she whispered loud enough for everyone to hear.

"C'mon, it's not a weapons factory," Shepard said, stumbling a little closer. "That wouldn't be top secret." She blinked blearily up at the yahg. "She's right, you really _do_ look girly."

"That's because I am." The yahg flexed a handful of brown-painted talons right in her face, and Shepard purposefully overreacted, falling on her butt as the two humans laughed. "Now get out of here!"

"Psssh, if it's not weapons, then what is it? It can't be drugs," Arak mused, putting one finger to her lips, mumbling loudly around it. "Those are legal here. Slaves too, that's why we were looking for those hunks." She gasped, lighting up. "Oooh! Maybe it's a warehouse full of new _alien_ hunks!" She turned a puppy dog look at the guard. "Tell me it's alien hunks. I'd love to make some first contact, if you know what I mean." She straddled his thigh, grinding her crotch around it.

"Total cabin fever," the other human said, snickering.

"I want an alien hunk too," Shepard said loudly, scrambling back to her feet. "You can't have them all! Give me an alien hunk!" She lunged for the door, ducking under the yahg but letting the other human grab her around the waist. "I want an alien hunk!"

"Listen, you crazy freighter tramp, calm the fuck down!" he said, dropping his weapon to the ground to get a better grip on her as Arak took up the rallying cry. A crowd was starting to gather in the corridor, according to plan. Standard misdirection, get everyone looking at them and give Taryn and Singh a better chance to sneak in the upper level and at least spy, and let Moon and Smith try the other entrance.

The door opened suddenly, revealing a yahg sized cybernetic monstrosity. Arak screamed and fainted dead away, slumping up against its foot as Shepard trembled, dropping to her knees. The part of her brain that wasn't playing drunken freighter crew was cataloging its weaponry and defenses. Yahg were already tough opponents, thanks to their limited regeneration and eyesight, but this thing looked like it could take out a trio of yahg.

"Take them to processing center D," it ordered, a flat monotone that reminded her of Moon, only at least an octave deeper. It kicked Arak none too gently, and hit the door close button.

The two humans looked back and forth. "How the fuck are we supposed to guard the door _and_ take them to D block?" the guy holding Shepard complained.

"Uh, I could just take her and go," Shepard whimpered. That part wasn't entirely feigned; she wasn't sure what the processing center was, and she didn't want to find out.

"I'll take 'em," the dark haired one said. He hauled the groggy Arak to her feet, ignoring her coughs and the arms wrapped around her ribs. "Don't worry, I'll put in a good word for you," he told his partner, who just grumbled and waved one hand in a 'get out of here' gesture.

He gestured Shepard forward with his assault rifle, the other arm locked on Arak's elbow, and they stumbled along, maintaining their drunken cover until they reached a spot with fewer people. That was when Arak pulled out her other pistol and shoved it into his ribs. "I think we'll just be going now," she said, still wheezy from the kick.

He froze. "You fucking kidding me?" She shoved the pistol a little harder against his ribs, and he sighed. "You have no idea how bad it is for you to fuck with the Haze."

Shepard had turned around, taking his weapon away as he glared at her. "Relax, I'm sure you won't get in that much trouble." She grinned, and tapped the now visible laser dot on his chest. "And it beats being dead." He glanced down, turning pale as he realized how close to dying he'd just gotten.

Shepard and Arak fled through the station, moving along carefully planned escape routes Benson had suggested that avoided most of the worst neighborhoods. Still, Benson hadn't been on the station in almost a year, and they ended up having to shoot one drell mugger who was strung out bad enough to ignore the threat of their weapons. Thirty minutes later, they rendezvoused in a hotel just above the level of roach motel.

Benson was waiting for them with a scowl on her face. "What the hell happened? Haze gangers are arrogant scum, but they still haven't graduated to just grabbing random people off the streets at gunpoint!"

Arak sighed. "Can I get my ribs patched up first?"

"I thought you were watching us," Shepard said pointedly, causing Benson to grimace. "We made a distraction, as per plan B, and one of them opened the door and ordered the guards to take us to 'processing,' which I'm guessing means slavery."

Benson shivered. "Only to start with, until your buyer has worked you to uselessness. Then you get fed to yahg." She went back to scowling. "I couldn't get a vantage point on the actual door. Once you stepped up to the guards, I didn't have a line of sight."

Arak dropped her coveralls down to her waist, already injecting nanites into her side. "There's two kinds of aliens in there. The big ones, like what kicked me. I'm guessing they're bodyguards, and they look meaner than yahg. The other ones are human sized and look insectile." She held up her omni-tool and grinned. "I got a sample off the big guy, but something tells me they aren't the bosses."

"Well, it's better than what we had this time yesterday," Shepard said. "Where's Porridge?"

Benson pointed back towards the lobby. "Browsing the various weapons merchants. Also being our lookout in case the Haze followed anyone back here."

Nodding absently, Shepard looked at her own omni-tool. They'd been on station for an hour already, though it seemed like three times that long. She fought the urge to message Moon and ask how their mission was doing. She'd have to find out when he got back, no matter how antsy her adrenaline was making her.

* * *

Taryn and Singh strolled down the boulevard, occasionally stopping to look at items for sale. Taryn was busy accessing station maintenance systems, pretending to compare merchandise, and trying to find an inconspicuous way into the air shafts above the docking bay. They weren't all large enough to crawl through, either, which was mildly frustrating. Life would be so much easier if Alliance enemies would make multiple convenient entry points for infiltration scouts like himself.

Singh snorted in laughter, and for a moment Taryn thought his fellow N7 graduate had read his mind. Until he followed the other man's line of sight to a booth openly selling various inter-species pornography. The one at the front had someone obviously pretending to be Moon, about to have sex with a yahg female. At least, he thought it was female. "I do not understand how your species can run around thinking about sex all the time," he said.

Singh snorted again. "Plenty of your species does too. Just because you can't have children out of season doesn't mean you can't enjoy sex."

"Spare me, I've fallen victim to your oh-so-clinical diatribes on physiology too many times," Taryn joked back. "Besides, I think I've found what we're looking for." The grungy merchant behind the counter perked up, only to sag back in disappointment as he pointed further down the street. "A hundred meters or so down that way."

"Oh, good. I'm looking forward to getting it and moving on to our hotel," Singh agreed, and they both picked up their pace. They finally stopped at a ramen bar, the dingy place looking none too appetizing. Still, if this was where they could gain access to the air shafts, he'd play along.

The interior was grungy, the lone occupant a snoozing cook behind the counter. While Taryn hacked into the back room, Singh dialed a small sedative into his omni-tool, put a hand on the man's shoulder long enough for the drug to absorb into the skin, and followed his partner. The storeroom was worse, the floor coated in a layer of sticky grime that smelled of rancid cooking oil.

Already climbing on the crates, it took the drell a matter of seconds to remove the covering and clamber into the air shaft. Shaking his head, the human followed him, glad for his rather lean frame. The air ducts were filthy, as expected, but the facial breathers protected them from any accidental coughing or sneezing. _The shower better be empty when we get to the safehouse_, Singh thought grumpily, thoroughly disgusted after a mere ten meters. Knowing that Taryn had it worse didn't help.

It took them twenty minutes to get through the vents to a spot they could observe. The wide air vent gave the drell enough room to turn around, and a small modification with their omni-tools had them listening in. Both of them were busy recording the entire event, but it was clear they had already missed something.

One of the giant cybernetic monsters tromped back to stand next to the umbilical. "Two human spacer tramps. They are being taken to processing," it said in a bass monotone.

"How boring," Rosen said. The head of the Haze was noticeable, dressed in shimmering silver fabric, scalp tattoos slightly obscured by the short hair growing out. "Can we get back to my point now?"

"Your point has been considered," the insectoid said, "and rejected. Your paranoia is not sufficient cause to shift our timetable."

"You don't get it," the ganger insisted. "The more planets you hit, the bigger the chance that eventually they'll catch on and trace you back here. Then you're dead, I'm dead, and nobody gets what they want."

Singh clenched one hand in a fist. A quick glance at Taryn's stony face meant he'd picked up on the implications too. Continuing the recording, they both started loosening the bolts holding this vent in place. Shepard had obviously been stymied, but Moon should be trying the other entrance.

"The Alliance has not tracked us. The Imperium has not tracked us. Your paranoia is groundless," the insectoid repeated. "They will not find us and they cannot stop us." It turned to the umbilical, where a half dozen more insectoids emerged, carrying three large crates. "As promised, the weapons and ammunition. We will strike at our next target on our own schedule."

As it turned to leave, one of the doors exploded inwards. Not the door Moon was going to try, which caused the two infiltrators to both tense up, reaching for their weapons as a half dozen yahg stormed in, armed and already firing. The haze bodyguards, several of them yahg, were already returning fire, and the cybernetic monsters lumbered forward towards the invaders.

"You heard them," the yahg leader roared, "those are the aliens who have taken our citizens! Kill them!" Singh watched as one of the others glowed with biotics, meeting the monster's charge and not budging an inch as they proceeded to pummel each other.

Thinking quickly, Singh tightened one bolt back up and hit the air vent, letting it swing freely on the one fastener. The amount of gunfire echoing through the room covered the sound, and Taryn's sniper rifle was up in an instant. The last insectoid had just reached the opening to the umbilical when the round turned his head into a smear across the wall, leaving the body to twitch.

Almost as if waiting for that signal, Moon and Porridge charged in from their side door, skirting around the conflict to reach the corpse. The smallest yahg happened to glance up, doing a double take as the drell fired again, blowing away a Haze human about to shoot at Moon. Singh smiled down, dropping a quick neurotoxin mine primed for yahg neurology, and landing it inches from one of the yahg biotics.

The little one growled a warning, and the infiltrators ducked away, diving backwards in separate directions down the air vent. Bullets chewed into the wall, most of them missing, though the sudden clanging noise told Singh at least one round had found his shields. He reverse crawled faster than he ever had since N training, and scooted around the bend towards the main trunk. He could turn around here, at least, and find his way back to the ramen shop. He wanted to go back for Taryn, but the drell had been a sniper and used to this kind of thing before he reached N7, and could get out on his own.

A grim twenty minutes later, he was back in the shop, shaking and slapping off as much of the dust as possible, waiting to remove the breather mask until his hair was mostly clear as well. The cook was still snoring soundly, oblivious to the noise and the mess left behind.

Taryn, knowing he was cut off for the moment, backed further down the air vent. It made a circle around the room, so worst case scenario he'd have to crawl an extra three hundred meters around the bay. Which gave him plenty of opportunity to take extra shots at the yahg. He reached the next vent, ten meters from his starting point, and aimed through the slats in the vent. Two shots shattered the biotic barrier around one of the yahg, who ducked away and ripped the vent cover apart with a warp. The canny drell was already retreating. It wouldn't take them too long to catch on, but his job wasn't to kill the yahg. All he had to do was keep them busy enough for Moon to get a sample and get out.

* * *

Down in the bay, Paragh roared, hurling a drell ganger into the nearest wall, definitely deceased from the bone-shattering impact. The cybernetic brutes were covering the escape of their masters, and he intended to wreak horrible vengeance against them for their transgressions against the Yahg Imperium. He could care less what they did to the feeble Alliance.

Rosen had vanished in the first few seconds of the fight as his guards covered his escape. Knowing that _kitterak_ was still lose was like a thorn in his throat, but in the meantime, he was content to slaughter those foolish enough to stand up against the mightiest foes the yahg had to offer.

"Above us!" Boprez shouted, already spraying the air vent with bullets. Morrza staggered as the mine started spraying out the neurotoxin. It would only cause dizziness and disorientation, but that was bad enough in the middle of a pitched firefight. Holding his breath, he kicked the mine out into the hallway before turning back to the combat.

Through the haze and the blood spray, he caught sight of a pair of humans. Both of them were bald, one holding a grenade launcher while the other was using an omni-tool to take samples of a dead insectoid. The umbilical snapped, air whistling out of the room for a moment before the emergency shields blinked on, and that was when Paragh caught sight of the second human. "MOON!" he roared.

The human in question looked up, grinning as he pocketed the sample and pulled out his assault rifle. His partner started lobbing grenades liberally across the rest of the room as they ducked towards their exit door.

Snarling, the yahg warlord opened fire on them, only to be interrupted as a Haze yahg blasted away at him with a shotgun. A burst from his rifle and a hurled corpse put that annoyance down long enough for him to fire at Moon again, only for another Haze ganger to start shooting at him. "Grar! Put down these fools so we can track him!" Another sniper shot from the air vents sent Ordek ducking for cover.

It took them five more minutes to get rid of the last of the Haze, who kept pouring into the docking bay sporadically as word of the firefight spread. Kralb had already been inspecting the remains for the last minute, ignoring the gunfire as she examined the corpse. "Well?" Paragh demanded, venting some of his fury by stomping on the nearest corpses.

"We've never encountered a race like this before," she said. "Its genetics are bizarre, and it has almost as much cybernetics as flesh. All of which is breaking down abnormally fast." The scientist straightened up. "We heard enough from the door. The common criminal scum here are not behind the abductions. The Alliance is not at fault. These," she stopped talking and looked down at the crumbling remains, "are doing the same to the food races as to us."

"Moon is escaping!" Paragh shouted.

"He already escaped," Azord countered. "We have two trails, and can only follow one. Track those who insult our people, or track the human." The threat hanging over their head didn't need to be said aloud, already on all their minds.

Paragh stood very still for a moment before suddenly slamming one fist into the wall, shattering the armor panel. "Very well," he murmured. "We will hunt these insects to their hive, and we will exterminate them for the insult they have offered."

"There is still one way we might do both," Ordek said. The logistic yahg twitched his biotics as he picked up one of the beam weapons the Haze gangers had been using. "Moon entered after we did. Even if he knows their next target, he may still seek out the Keeper. The Alliance pays for information just as we do." Holding the rifle up, he tried to fit a pudgy finger into the human-designed trigger guard before dropping it back to the ground.

Their leader closed four eyes as he considered it. "How many information nodes does this Keeper use?" he asked reluctantly.

"Several. They change on a regular basis, but do leave a clue on how to find the new one," Kralb said. "Once we can identify their locations, we can watch for Moon or others of his ilk."

Turning towards the door, Paragh nodded. "Find these nodes. I will return to our ship and send a coded message home about our locating these insects."

Gathering their weapons, they stormed out into an utterly deserted corridor, all of the businesses closed down the instant the firefight started. A few quick hand gestures split up their band, fleeing into the mazes of Omega's corridors to avoid whatever Haze reinforcements were on their way. They were on a mission from their emperor, and nothing would stop them from completing their hunt.

* * *

Moon entered the hotel, feeling vaguely triumphant. Emotions were a distant thing to him, had been for years ever since that emergency cranial implant. The doctors had been apologetic, even promised him that he could re-learn his emotional responses, but after a few weeks, Moon stopped pretending to care. Doing his job was a lot easier without emotions to get in the way.

He scanned the room quickly. Porridge had given him the hand signal for 'Everything's good' outside, and Shepard, Arak, and Benson were all watching him with interest. The shower was running, which accounted for one of the other pair. "Who's back?"

"Singh. He and Taryn ended up separated when the yahg realized they were in the air vents." Shepard shrugged. "He's rinsing off several centuries worth of air vent dust."

Moon just nodded, leaning against the wall next to the door and pulling up his omni-tool. Their subcutaneous tracking devices didn't work well enough to pinpoint locations on the map, with all the scrap metal and rock, but they worked well enough to give a bearing and distance. "He's four hundred meters away, coming towards us at about one meter per second." The pace of a brisk walk, exactly as proposed for an agent in a dangerous civilian population, who needed to look hurried but not panicked.

Eight minutes later, Taryn arrived, swapping ownership of the shower with Singh. The drell emerged in just his undershorts, the entire right side of his torso covered in discolored, cracked scales. "Damn, that looks painful," Arak said.

"I will live. I made the mistake of thinking Singh's neurotoxin had left one of their biotics weaker than it had." He nodded respectfully as the Asian linguist handed him a packet of medigel anyway.

"Alright," Moon said. "I got samples of the insectoid DNA. Obviously we need to do a full analysis of it, but," he paused to bring up the image, two slightly different quad-strand DNA helixes floating above his wrist, "they are close enough to match."

"We overheard part of their conversation," Singh interjected. "They admitted as much. They're doing the same thing to the yahg. The Haze has those weapons because they're trading our colonies for them."

"What we don't know is where, or when, they're going to strike next. We can assume these insects have at least a traveler's map of the Alliance. Their espionage capabilities are unknown, but given their dominance of our electronic communications, we should assume that any significant troop movements will be tracked."

Shepard was listening with half her attention while studying the scans they had taken of this alien vessel. "We can narrow it down, though. They don't have a warp drive."

"On that vessel," Moon rebuked her. "We can't assume that their other ships are the same, not without further study."

"There's still the Keeper," Benson said. Moon glared at her, and she shrugged. "Look, gangers aren't the brightest. Most of them, if their brains were grenades they couldn't blow their noses. Obviously their head honcho is a little brighter than the rest of the pack, but still, it's not like they have agents planted around the border worlds of the Alliance. If he's giving them targets, he's doing it by buying that info from the Keeper."

They waited in silence while he chewed over their options. "Tell me," he asked slowly, "has anyone ever managed to track the Keeper down?"

* * *

_**Codex Entry: Alliance Frigates**_

The smallest classification in the Alliance Navy, the Frigate actually encompasses several different ship models. Frigates range from eighty to one hundred fifty meters in length, and are typically ten to fifteen meters tall, with three decks. Depending on the class, frigates normally have a complement of ten to seventeen officers, with one to two hundred enlisted crew.

The primary use of frigates are for stealth missions, as with the _Olympus_-class stealth frigate, and anti-fighter screens for carriers and dreadnaughts, as with the _Bedrock_ and _Starlight_ classes. Most frigates are armed with multiple GARDIAN lasers and Javelin-class missile launchers, and have one main gun. With light armor and duel shields, a frigate can stand up to two or three shots from an Imperium destroyer before suffering catastrophic damage.

All frigates have a Taurus-model eezo core, and a ten-liter anti-matter containment mixing chamber to power the warp drive. At full power, a frigate can cover approximately 1 LY/m, though this is only recommended speed for emergencies and combat conditions.


End file.
